By Thomas Kohout
The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, directed by Maranda C. Ward, Ed.D ’17, has two grants totaling more than $816,000 from Gilead Sciences Inc. to support 18 months of research received -informed education initiative, Two in One: HIV+COVID Screening and Testing Model.
This study aims to advocate for policy updates to allow primary care physicians to make HIV screening — and PrEP screening and HIV testing, as appropriate — routine for all patients while being screened for COVID vaccines at the same visit and – Check for booster vaccinations. The research topics will also be used to support capacity building for primary care practitioners to enable culturally appropriate and non-judgmental communication about HIV and COVID with patients who identify as Black, Indigenous or Colored (BIPOC) and LGBTQIA+.
“We developed this national training model to reflect and meet the goals of the Healthy People 2030 initiative, which sets benchmarks for achieving health equity, closing health inequalities and attaining health literacy in the United States,” Ward said , Assistant Professor of Clinical Research and Leadership .
Two in One includes three parts: research, education and social marketing, beginning with qualitative stories from BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ patients and GPs.
“Our national advisory board of content experts will complement our insights [primary care practitioners] and patients about the intermediaries and barriers of HIV and COVID prevention to ultimately guide the facets of this education model,” Ward said. “Our scoping reviews will also feed into two white papers on the impact of HIV and COVID policies on practice-based change.”
The project is aimed at 10,000 primary care practitioners, such as physicians, osteopaths, physician assistants, registered nurses, and registered nurses working in practice across the United States, or those enrolled as medical students and interns at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are in the pipeline. . The two-part training series features nine live-streamed monthly Continuing Medical Education (CME) lectures and an asynchronous module-based CME training course and toolkit. The series will culminate in a symposium focused on translating the knowledge gained from the speaker series into policy-based and practice-based action.
Running concurrently with the training will be a series of social marketing messages or vignettes from primary care practitioners speaking to other physicians and healthcare professionals on how to provide unbiased HIV screening and testing and COVID vaccines/boosters in can integrate their standard of care.
For more information on this research-based model, visit the Two-in-One website: twoinone.smhs.gwu.edu.
