ViiV Healthcare Awards Southern Initiative Grants to Reduce HIV Disparities Among African Americans and Latinos

/PRNewswire/ -- ViiV Healthcare today announced the grant awardees of the Positive Action Southern Initiative, focused on supporting African American and Latino populations in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi to help high-risk HIV/AIDS individuals and provide linkages to HIV/AIDS care and treatment adherence.

"The Positive Action Southern Initiative awards are being made at a critical time in the national fight against HIV. These funds are nothing short of life-saving. Community organizations are facing tremendous pressure to do more with less in this economic climate and the demands continue to grow, especially among African American and Latino communities in Southern states," stated A. Cornelius Baker, Senior Policy Advisor of the National Black Gay Men's Advocacy Coalition. "I am excited that ViiV is supporting such important initiatives that address disparities in HIV and support the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy."

In the U.S., 1.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS(i) and African Americans and Latinos account for a disproportionate share of new HIV infections (62 percent). In 2007, the Southern United States accounted for almost half (46 percent) of new AIDS cases and has the greatest number of people estimated to be living with AIDS(i).

The Southern Initiative is part of ViiV Healthcare's Positive Action, a collaborative, community-focused program designed to address gaps in services or programs that support care and treatment adherence among individuals living with HIV/AIDS. ViiV Healthcare has committed $850,000 this year to support Positive Action Community Grants in the U.S. and $500,000 over the next two years to support the Southern Initiative grantees. ViiV Healthcare is hosting the grant recipients at this week's United States Conference on AIDS, where they will enable the development of a Regional HIV Network to share best practices and resources to advance the fight against HIV.

ViiV Healthcare has selected a total of seven organizations to receive grants over the next two years to support their programs specifically focused on reducing disparities in HIV/AIDS linkages to care and treatment among African American and Latinos in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The following organizations were selected as grant awardees:

-- Aid to Inmate Moms, based in Montgomery, AL, will continue its
collaboration with local AIDS Service Organizations to support
HIV-positive incarcerated women with critical counseling services.
-- Atlanta Harm Reduction Coalition, based in Atlanta, GA, will provide
additional case management services for HIV-positive individuals who
are re-entering the community from the state's jails and prisons.
-- Family Service of Greater Baton Rouge, based in Baton Rouge, LA, will
expand its Corrections Referral and Case Management program to serve
more HIV-positive individuals exiting the corrections system and to
successfully connect them with quality care.
-- Grace House in Jackson, MS, will expand its CLEAR (Choosing Life:
Empowerment, Action, Results) program to serve more HIV-positive
clients and provide services aimed at improving treatment adherence,
cognitive behavior, and prevention activities.
-- Positive Impact, based in Atlanta, GA, will provide additional
intensive case management services for HIV-positive Latino individuals
and HIV-positive African American women.
-- Southwest Louisiana AIDS Council based in Lake Charles, LA, will
expand its medical systems navigation program, FAST (Find, Assess,
Stabilize, and Treat), to serve additional newly-diagnosed persons,
previously incarcerated persons, and those who have not successfully
remained in care.
-- Union Mission's J.C. Lewis Primary Health Care Center, based in
Savannah, GA, will enhance its Healthy Living education and adherence
program for homeless and low-income persons living with HIV/AIDS.



"ViiV Healthcare received a great response from grassroots organizations in the South demonstrating the need is great. The awardees' proposed programs are unique and provide promise towards alleviating HIV in the United States among communities most impacted by the disease. ViiV Healthcare puts the interests of those affected by HIV at the center of everything we do. We are honored to support communities through these grants. It is our hope the initiatives will positively impact those areas in critical need of HIV/AIDS resources," said Bill Collier, Head of North America, ViiV Healthcare.

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HHS Awards $17 Million in a New National Initiative to Fight Health Care-Associated Infections

/PRNewswire/ -- HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced the award of $17 million to fund projects to fight costly and dangerous health care-associated infections, or HAIs.

"When patients go to the hospital, they expect to get better, not worse," Secretary Sebelius said. "Eliminating infections is critical to making care safer for patients and to improving the overall quality and safety of the health care system. We know that it can be done, and this new initiative will help us reach our goal."

HAIs are one of the most common complications of hospital care. Nearly 2 million patients develop HAIs, which contribute to 99,000 deaths each year and $28 billion to $33 billion in health care costs. HAIs are caused by different types of bacteria that infect patients being treated in a hospital or health care setting for other conditions. The most common HAI-causing bacteria is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. The number of MRSA-associated hospital stays has more than tripled since 2000, reaching 368,600 in 2005, according to HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project.

Of the $17 million, $8 million will fund a national expansion of the Keystone Project, which within 18 months successfully reduced the rate of central-line blood stream infections in more than 100 Michigan intensive care units and saved 1,500 lives and $200 million. The project was originally started by the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Michigan Health & Hospital Association to implement a comprehensive unit-based safety program. The program involves using a checklist of evidence-based safety practices; staff training and other tools for preventing infections that can be implemented in hospital units; standard and consistent measurement of infection rates; and tools to improve teamwork among doctors, nurses and hospital leaders.

Last year, AHRQ funded an expansion of this project to 10 states. With additional funding from AHRQ and a private foundation, the Keystone Project is now operating in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. The new funding announced today will expand the effort to more hospitals, extend it to other settings in addition to ICUs, and broaden the focus to address other types of infections. Specifically, the new $8 million in funding will provide:

-- $6 million to the Health Research & Educational Trust for national
efforts to expand the Comprehensive Unit-Based Patient Safety Program
to Reduce Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections. The funding
will allow more hospitals in all 50 states to participate in the
program and expand the program's reach into hospital settings outside
of the ICU. The Health Research & Educational Trust will also use $1
million to support a demonstration project that will help fight
catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

-- $1 million to Yale University to support a comprehensive plan to
prevent bloodstream infections in hemodialysis patients.


AHRQ, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), also identified several high-priority areas to apply the remaining $9 million toward reducing MRSA and other types of HAIs. These projects will focus on:

-- Reducing Clostridium difficile infections through a regional hospital
collaborative.
-- Reducing the overuse of antibiotics by primary care clinicians
treating patients in ambulatory and long-term care settings.
-- Evaluating two ways to eliminate MRSA in ICUs.
-- Improving the measurement of the risk of infections after surgery.
-- Identifying national-, regional- and state-level rates of HAIs that
are acquired in the acute care setting.
-- Reducing infections caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae
Carbapenemase-producing organisms by applying recently developed
recommendations from CDC's Healthcare Infection Control Practices
Advisory Committee.
-- Standardizing antibiotic use in long-term care settings (two
projects).
-- Implementing teamwork principles for frontline health care providers.

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Secretary Sebelius Releases $33 Million in ARRA Funds to Train Health Professionals

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced awards totaling $33 million to expand the training of health care professionals. The funds are part of the $500 million allotted to HHS' Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to address workforce shortages under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

"President Obama is committed to passing health insurance reform and we're closer to reform than ever before," said Secretary Sebelius. "The Recovery Act will help ensure we grow our health care workforce and give our aspiring doctors, nurses and health professionals the tools and training they need to provide top-quality care to more Americans."

"As we mark 200 days since President Obama signed ARRA, HRSA has moved quickly to distribute most of the $2.5 billion assigned to us," said HRSA Administrator Mary Wakefield, Ph.D., R.N. "These funds are helping us rebuild the infrastructure needed to produce more skilled health professionals, and they are expanding essential primary care services to hundreds of thousands of additional Americans through our health center system."

The grants announced today, with funding totals, are distributed through six HRSA programs:

* Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students, $19.3 million. This
program funds health professions schools and training programs which, in
turn, provide scholarships to full-time health professions students,
with priority given to those with financial need.

* Centers of Excellence, $4.9 million. This program funds health
professions schools to establish or expand programs for minority
individuals. Funds may be used to improve student academic performance,
recruit and retain minority faculty, and expand opportunities to train
at off-campus, community-based health care sites.

* Public Health Traineeships, $3 million. This program funds
schools of public health to support traineeships that pay tuition, fees,
and stipends for students in biostatistics, epidemiology, environmental
health, toxicology, nutrition, or maternal and child health.

* Nursing Workforce Diversity, $2.6 million. This program
increases nursing education opportunities for individuals from
disadvantaged backgrounds through student scholarships or stipends,
pre-entry preparation, and retention activities.

* Health Careers Opportunities, $2.5 million. This program funds
schools and health professions training sites to establish or expand
programs that help individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds enter and
graduate from a health professions program.

* Dental Public Health Residency Training, $810,925. This program
funds residency programs in dental public health, including financial
aid to residents.

Today's grants follow an Aug. 12 announcement by HHS Deputy Secretary Bill Corr of $13.4 million in ARRA funds for loan repayments to nurses who agree to practice in facilities with critical shortages and for schools of nursing to provide loans to students who will become nurse
faculty.

To date, HHS has announced the availability of nearly $200 million in ARRA workforce funds, of a total $300 million, to expand HRSA's National Health Service Corps. The funds will pay for student loan repayments for primary care medical dental and mental health clinicians who wish to practice, for a minimum of two years, in NHSC sites that treat underserved and uninsured people.

In addition, HRSA received $2 billion through ARRA to expand health care services to low-income and uninsured individuals through its health center program. To date, more than $1.3 billion of these funds have been awarded to community-based organizations across the country. HRSA-supported health centers treated 17 million patients in 2008, 40 percent of whom have no health insurance.

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