Ryan white title III HIV capacity development and planning grants - project title: FY 2023 rwhap part C capacity development program infrastructure development - telehealth innovation funding amount…

Ryan white title III HIV capacity development and planning grants - project title: FY 2023 rwhap part C capacity development program infrastructure development - telehealth innovation funding amount requested: $150,000 project summary ochs proposes to implement an innovative telehealth infrastructure development program, to ensure access to quality comprehensive, culturally and ethically sensitive healthcare by negating the impact of barriers to health care related to transportation, cost, access and issues related to digital literacy. The care will be provided within the primary care medical home model and will be available to patients in the areas where the patients live, work and play. The purpose of this telehealth innovation is to strengthen organizational capacity to respond to the changing health care landscape and increase access to high-quality HIV primary health care services for low-income and underserved people with HIV. The cost of health care is a barrier to access to care for persons in underserved, low income areas of osceola county. The poverty rate for osceola county's non-hispanic black/african americans is 15.4% compared to white non- hispanic of 9.0% cultural barriers will be addressed in the proposed innovative telehealth care model which will include ensure hiring providers who are representative of the target population in race and culture. Outreach to those communities will be part of the innovation plan to educate those who are in our service area and within this target population and enter them into care. As telehealth continues to gain prominence, and become more integrated in patient care, patients will be required to become more knowledgeable about digital health tools and the importance of using the tools. Patients with little or no access to the digital tools will experience low digital health literacy further deepening the health equity gradient between white non-hispanic patients and low income and communities of color. Lack of digital literacy can lead to negative patient outcomes. These crucial barriers prevents this population from benefiting from the accessibility of telehealth services. This funding will be used to close these gaps in services by purchasing additional and more advanced information technology equipment to expand and improve these services to outreach to and provide targeted HIV services to more communities of need as identified in our unmet needs analysis. In addition, ochs will enhance and expand the equipment on the current mobile unit and at the fixed sites. Ochs has limited outreach to some areas of unmet needs in which ochs needs to increase penetration of telehealth sites to serve people with HIV at locations such as community centers, county human service site, and other sites located in uninsured, underserved, rural and urban communities of need throughout osceola county where the populations of most need live and work.