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Cadillac care for the poor... addressing local health emergency around STDs and HIV in an urban community-based medical home
Retrovirology volume 9, Article number: P74 (2012)
Background
NHSC, an urban community-based health center in Plainfield, Union County, NJ, USA, provides services to 25,000 uninsured/minority/impoverished patients. Plainfield consistently ranks first and second among the 29 Union County municipalities for Syphilis, Gonorrhea and Chlamydia. Plainfield ranks second for the numbers of HIV/AIDS. There is, therefore, a dire need to address the existing health emergency around STDs and its correlation with HIV.
Methods
NHSC incorporates a coordinated, proactive, patient-centered approach to integrating STD screening/prevention with primary care in a medical home environment. Risk assessments/screenings are done by clinicians. Those identified suspicious for STD or with STD symptoms/diagnosis receive on-the-spot HIV counseling and Rapid testing. Patients receive immediate treatment intervention for suspected STDs. There are on-going prevention efforts including development of Risk Reduction Plans agreed upon/signed by patients.
Results
Resulting from the integrated STD/HIV prevention approach: 100% of patients presenting with symptoms/suspicion for STDs received HIV counseling/Rapid testing; 100% received prevention education and free condoms; 100% had Risk Reduction Plans developed and agreed upon; 19 persons were identified STD and HIV positive and were immediately linked to care.
Conclusions
Integration of STD/HIV prevention with outpatient care under the umbrella of Early Intervention Services allowed to: identify extend of STD/HIV correlation; allow for a seamless one-stop shop prevention-treatment service delivery model; improve patient awareness of on-site prevention/treatment resources.
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Kudryashova-Hernandez, L. Cadillac care for the poor... addressing local health emergency around STDs and HIV in an urban community-based medical home. Retrovirology 9 (Suppl 1), P74 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-9-S1-P74
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-9-S1-P74
Keywords
- Syphilis
- Outpatient Care
- Rapid Testing
- Medical Home
- Delivery Model