Today's theme for the 2024 National Ryan White Conference on HIV Care & Treatment: Empowering Communities. This has been a constant message since the first days of the Ryan White program. Community empowerment is a significant reason that they Ryan White CARE Act even came into being, and it has taken multiple forms over the years. Early work in the 1990s focused on empowering consumers to take on leadership roles in planning. More recent activities, over the past 20 years, have focused on the role of peers in HIV care delivery--as patient advocates, community health workers, and other roles.
See our People with HIV & Community Involvement resources to support these priorities and consider these sessions on Thursday, August 22, highlighting the history of consumer leadership on the Ryan White Community:
- Community Engagement 201: Hear Your HIV History from Those Who Lived It: Bridging the Generations through Storytelling
- Peer Stories from Alliance for Positive Change’s Rise Up! Documentary
- Nothing about Us without Us Is for Us: Interrelated Spheres of MIPHA in Action (Meaningful Involvement of People with HIV/AIDS)
ICYMI: All sessions will be archived in the coming months on National Ryan White Conference Archives.
Best Practices in HIV Care
In today's blog, we jump ahead to the focus of Friday, Implementing Interventions, taking the opportunity to highlight best practices/innovations in care. "Best practices" is a term freely sprinkled throughout the agenda for the 2024 National Ryan White Conference: 28 times. Sessions explore interventions with proven effectiveness in diverse areas such as planning (Session 23015), development of a housing model (Session 25244); delivery of care for people with HIV and diabetes (Session 23005); the HIVQM Module (Session 27169); workforce development (Session 27099); streamlining eligibility (Session 27131); meaningful involvement of Black women (Session 27063); development of jurisdictional housing strategy (Session 23011); involvement of people with HIV in quality management (Session 25287).
Best Practices Compilation at the Conference
Following are sessions featuring interventions included the Best Practices Compilation, which is comprised of care approaches that have "demonstrated effectiveness at improving client outcomes along the HIV care continuum." To date, there are well over 120 such interventions in the Best Practices collection.
The Pipeline: HRSA's HIV/AIDS Bureau has developed a "pipeline" of potential best practices to draw upon, developed under HRSA initiatives and refined by projects like IHIP: Integrating HIV Innovative Practices.
Wednesday, August 21
4:00 - 5:00pm - Link-Up Rx Medicaid Expansion: Using ART Refill Information to Improve Retention in HIV Care - Read about Link-Up Rx, which emerged from a past HRSA project, the Center for Innovation and Engagement (CIE).
5:15 – 6:15pm - Promotion of good ideas is the purpose of The Ambassador Toolkit. The Best Practices Compilation project describes this as a tool for those "looking to promote or share the Compilation's best practices across the HIV service delivery community." Learn more in The RWHAP Best Practices Compilation: Co-Creation of an Ambassador Toolkit, Wednesday (Georgetown Room).
Thursday, August 22
2:15-2:45pm - Poster - Telehealth 2.0: Revitalizing a Previously Successful Telehealth Program with Updated Process Mapping - Read about Telehealth Implementation at a Midwest HIV Clinic and Meet a Staffer at the University of Nebraska.
2:45 – 4:15pm - Data to Care for RWHAP Clients Coinfected with HIV and Hepatitis C: Lessons Learned for RWHAP Jurisdictions and Providers - Read about Data to Care for People Coinfected with HIV and Hepatitis C Virus, developed under the SPNS Initiative, Leveraging a Data to Care Approach to Cure Hepatitis C within the RWHAP.
Friday, August 23
11:15 - 12:15pm - Community Led Best Practices: Innovating Commercial Tobacco Dependence Treatment in HIV Care - Read about the Tobacco Use Reduction in People Living with HIV Project, developed by the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services' Tobacco Section.
11:15 - 12:15pm - Positive Impact Health Centers (PIHC) is presenting as part of the Black Women First project, An IHIP guide will be coming out later this year. Individuals interested in replicating this work may want to attend this session.
Our History: Ryan's Legacy and What Has Yet to Be Achieved
"Ryan's personal story still resonates." Those were among the opening words of Jesse Milan Jr., JD in his remarks at the closing plenary of the 2020 National Ryan White Conference.
Milan, who has lived with HIV for over 30 years, highlighted the beginning of the RWHAP, its evolution, and the ongoing impact of the RWHAP on people with HIV and in the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative. He asked attendees to think about how they were impacted by Ryan White and how they apply his lessons to their own lives: What did you hope to achieve in your life, what has made it possible to live and work for change, and what work must be done for justice, resilience, and hope?
Past Conference Themes on Innovation
Exploring new ways to deliver HIV care has been a constant theme of Ryan White Conferences. Here's a recap of recent sessions:
- 2022: The Time is Now: Harnessing the Power of Innovation, Health Equity, and Community, to End the HIV Epidemic
- 2020: 30 Years of Innovating Care, Optimizing Public Health, Ending the HIV Epidemic
- 2018: Catalyzing Success: Advancing Innovation. Leveraging Data. Ending the HIV Epidemic