Grant: Team Grant: Community-Based Primary Healthcare - LOI

Tremendous advances have made in the treatment of HIV/AIDS rendering it a manageable chronic condition. As HIV-infected persons now survive for decades after acquiring their infection, co-morbid conditions increasingly impact health care access, health outcomes and costs. Important co-morbidities include Hepatitis C (HCV) co-infection, drug and alcohol use, mental illness and growing number of chronic health conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular, liver and renal disease, and cancer. In fact, multiple morbidities co-exist in the majority of HIV infected persons, increasing the complexity of their medical care. At the same time, the HIV and HCV epidemics are affecting much more diverse and vulnerable populations particularly injection drug users and aboriginal peoples. Thus a main challenge is to ensure vulnerable populations have adequate and appropriate access to care for multiple conditions simultaneously (e.g. integrated addictions treatment; HCV treatment evaluation and initiation; screening for specific cancers or diabetes). We believe primary healthcare will be the most effective and appropriate response to this complex array of health needs and that community engagement is a prerequisite for successful care models to be developed and implemented. The overall goal of this Innovative Team Grant in Community Based Primary Health Care is to rapidly generate the evidence that will permit the evaluation, development and implementation of innovative care models that increase equitable access to care, improve the prevention and management of HIV/HCV and associated conditions, and enhance collaboration between specialty and primary care settings. Thus we have assembled an international multi-disciplinary team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, health professionals, community partners and decisions makers from Canada and Australia focused on optimizing quality of care and health outcomes for people living with, and at risk for, HIV and HCV.