Check out the newly re-designed Data by Geography tool, featuring intuitive navigation, maps integrated into the results page, and integration with the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) Fact Sheets.

August 18 marked the 29th anniversary of the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act. First authorized in 1990, the Ryan White CARE Act is the legislation that created the HRSA HIV/AIDS Bureau (HRSA HAB) Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program.

The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program provides a comprehensive system of HIV primary medical care, medications, and essential support services for low-income people with HIV. The Program funds grants to states, cities/counties, and local community-based organizations. More than half of people with diagnosed HIV in the United States – more than 500,000 people – receive services through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program each year. In 2017, 85.9% of Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program clients were virally suppressed, exceeding national average of approximately 59.8%.

The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program is a critical component of the “Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America” initiative, which was announced earlier this year during the State of the Union address.

For more information, visit www.hrsa.gov/ending-hiv-epidemic.

The new Uniform Data System (UDS) data are out and show that health centers continue to provide increased access to high quality, value-based, comprehensive primary care for their communities. Health centers treat one in 12 people nationwide, one in every nine children, and are increasingly well-positioned to meet the nation’s most common and pressing health care needs, as well as emerging health priorities.

In 2018:

• 93% of health centers provided mental health counseling and treatment.
• 67% of health centers provided substance use disorder (SUD) services.
• One in six people living with HIV received care from a HRSA-funded health center.

See the 2018 Health Center Program national-level grantee data from the UDS.

View the HRSA Health Center Program fact sheet.

Watch our Chalk Talk video overview of the Health Center Program.

On July 31, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf acknowledged the long-standing issues with existing state systems and announced — by executive order — an overhaul of the state systems and services to protect the most vulnerable Pennsylvanians.

Gov. Wolf’s “Protection of Vulnerable Populations” executive order establishes the Office of Advocacy and Reform to be maintained by the Governor’s Office, led by an executive director. Positions within the new office will include a new child advocate position, integration of the Long-term Care Ombudsman, and a Council on Reform, including 25 voting members appointed by Gov. Wolf, to support this effort by looking at protecting vulnerable populations from three perspectives: prevention and diversion, protection and intervention, and justice and support.

Both the Council on Reform and the Office of Advocacy and Reform will identify reforms needed for Pennsylvania to better protect and support individuals relying upon services and assistance from the commonwealth.

“I want to be clear that I am not disparaging the hardworking and, frankly, underpaid and underappreciated workers within this system,” Gov. Wolf said. “This is not their fault and the failures are not of their making. But we’ve had a series of incidents in our commonwealth that have revealed inadequacies in the system’s ability to protect and uplift Pennsylvanians in vulnerable situations.”

“I want to know what else we can do because this is what we’re here to do as a department, is to protect people and people who are in institutions or facilities. If we can’t do that, that’s not government that works. So this is really important, it’s why it’s so important to the governor, it’s why it’s so important to me,” DHS Secretary Miller says.

The Council on Reform held its first meeting immediately following the announcement. The council is charged with reporting its findings to the governor by Nov. 1 after seeking input from various stakeholder groups.

Read the executive order online.

This request for information (RFI) jointly issued by several Federal offices, including Health and Human Services’ National Institutes for Health, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense, seeks information about the use of telehealth in hospital emergency medical care settings to facilitate the care of individuals with suicide risk.  Topics of interest include what telehealth services are being used, what contributed to the selection and implementation of those services, what are the characteristics of the emergency department (i.e. urban/rural setting), and approaches used to identify suicide risk of patients in the emergency department.  In 2015, suicide death rates in rural counties were higher than the rates in larger metropolitan counties.   Comments are due on August 29, 2019. More information is available here.

Countries that are home to one-fourth of Earth’s population face an increasingly urgent risk: the prospect of running out of water. From India to Iran to Botswana, 17 countries around the world are currently under extremely high water stress, meaning they are using almost all the water they have, the World Resources Institute said in a report published August 6, 2019. Read more.

Thomas Engels was named Acting Administrator for the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) on August 1, 2019 and will oversee the execution of HRSA’s $11.7 billion annual budget, including the Health Center Program, the National Health Service Corps and NURSE Corps, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and more. Before joining HRSA six months ago as Principal Deputy Administrator, Mr. Engels was Deputy Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services from 2015 to 2019. He was an active member of the Governor’s Task Force on Opioid Abuse and also chaired the Governor’s Human Resources Shared Services Executive Committee. Read more. Mr. Engel’s predecessor, Dr. George Sigounas, has been reassigned to an advisor role in the office of the HHS Secretary.

The Pennsylvania Departments of Human Services and Aging have announced a helpline for families in kinship care situations, including grandparents raising their grandchildren because of the opioid crisis. The helpline is staffed by Kinship Navigators – compassionate, knowledgeable social service professionals prepared to help families locate, understand, and access resources that may be able to help them. Kinship Navigators will connect grandparents and other relatives who are raising children with resources such as health, financial and legal services, support groups, training, and parenting advice. They will help families locate physical or behavioral health services, enroll the child in school, find support groups and other services designed to help caregivers. They will also be available to help families apply for federal, state, and local benefits such as Social Security, public assistance or CHIP. In addition, a website of resources is set to launch later this year. KinConnector can be reached by calling 1-866-KIN-2111 (1-866-546-2111) Monday – Thursday 9:00 am – 10:00 pm and Friday 9:00 am – 5:00 pm.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) examined trends and characteristics of prescriptions for naloxone, a drug that can help prevent overdose deaths by reversing the effects of opioids.  By analyzing data from retail pharmacies across the U.S., the CDC found that the number of naloxone prescriptions increased substantially from 2012 to 2018 with an increase of 106 percent from 2017 to 2018 alone.  The CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain recommends prescribing naloxone for patients who are at high risk for overdose, but the new research found that only one naloxone prescription was dispensed for every 69 high-dose opioid prescriptions – with the lowest rate in rural counties.  Last week, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics released a brief, Urban-Rural Differences in Drug Overdose Death Rates, showing rates were higher in urban areas for overdose deaths involving heroin, synthetic opioids, and cocaine, but higher in rural for natural and semisynthetic opioids, and psychostimulants with abuse potential.   Click here to access the full report.

On August 8, 2019, the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Federal Office of Rural Health Policy announced awards of over $111 million to 96 rural organizations across 37 states as part of its multi-year Rural Communities Opioid Response Program (RCORP) initiative.  These funds, which also include support for an evaluation of the initiative, will strengthen rural communities’ capacity to provide needed substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery services and build the evidence base for interventions that are effective in rural settings.

• Eighty rural consortia received RCORP-Implementation awards of $1 million each to implement a set of prevention, treatment, and recovery activities that align with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Five-Point Strategy to Combat the Opioid Crisis.
• Twelve recipients received RCORP-Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) Expansion awards of up to $725,000 each to establish and/or expand MAT in rural health clinic, hospital, Health Center Look-Alike, and tribal settings.
• Three recipients received $6.6 million each to establish Centers of Excellence on Substance Use Disorders (CoEs) that will identify, translate, disseminate, and implement evidence-based and promising practices related to the treatment for and prevention of substance use disorder (SUD).

The full announcement can be accessed here.