Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under its Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), awarded $109,652 to the University of Miami's Office of Research Administration on August 19, 2026, for an implementation research study examining telehealth delivery models for HIV and substance use disorder (SUD) care among people who inject drugs (PWID). This one-year project, scheduled for completion by August 18, 2027, will produce research findings and validated assessment tools to advance telehealth scalability in organizations serving PWID nationwide. The deliverables include analysis of existing healthcare service patterns across U.S. syringe services programs using latent class analysis and organizational correlate identification, as well as confirmatory factor analysis to establish construct validity of three new implementation outcome measures—acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility—tailored to the organizational context of PWID-serving organizations.

The project addresses a critical gap in understanding barriers to telehealth implementation, as only 30% of organizations serving PWID currently offer telehealth services despite demonstrated effectiveness in pilot studies and ongoing randomized controlled trials. Guided by the Implementation Research Logic Model, this study will identify implementation determinants, strategies, and mechanisms to inform nationwide expansion of evidence-based telehealth interventions designed to improve access to HIV and SUD care and support NIDA's broader objectives under the Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiative to reduce new HIV infections by 75% by 2025 and 90% by 2030.