The Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) has received a $26 million award from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to provide services to individuals diagnosed with HIV. It is the largest award for HIV services in Indiana history.
The 2017 Ryan White Supplemental Award will be used to increase treatment capacity for individuals with HIV by funding psychiatric nurse practitioners and mental health and addiction counselors. It also will facilitate efforts to connect individuals with HIV to care sooner, which can reduce the risk of spreading disease, and help expand case management services, develop a network of recovery coaches, provide food and housing assistance and pay for mental health and hepatitis C treatment.
ISDH will issue a request for proposals to select recipients of the funding. Efforts will be concentrated on areas of the state with the highest populations of people diagnosed with HIV: Allen, Clark, Lake, Madison, Marion, Monroe, Scott, Tippecanoe, Vanderburgh and Vigo counties.
“This award represents a significant accomplishment for Indiana and will dramatically advance our efforts to help people who have HIV and may also be battling addiction,” said Dennis Stover, director of the Division of HIV/STD/Viral Hepatitis at ISDH. “By connecting individuals who are HIV positive with care sooner and increasing access to mental health and addiction services, we can change the course of their lives and help put them on a path to recovery.”
The one-year award takes effect Oct. 1, 2017.
More than 12,000 Hoosiers were living with HIV and 507 were newly diagnosed with HIV or AIDS in 2016, according to preliminary data from ISDH. Substance use disorder, particularly injection drug use, increases the risk of transmitting HIV. Risk estimates provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that an HIV-negative person has a 1 in 160 chance of getting HIV each time that person shares a syringe to inject drugs with an HIV-positive person. In 2015, 6 percent of the 39,513 diagnoses of HIV in the United States were attributed to injection drug use, according to the CDC.
To learn more about HIV transmission among people who inject drugs, visithttps://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/idu.html. For important health and safety updates, follow ISDH on Twitter at @StateHealthIN and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/isdh1.
