OPA Funds New HIV Grants

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Population Affairs (OPA) is pleased to announce the award of $8,145,910 to 18 recipients under the announcement Integrating Routine HIV Testing and Linkage to HIV Care and Treatment in Family Planning Services Grants. These awards were made possible in part by resources from the Secretary’s Minority AIDS Initiative Fund (SMAIF).

Grantees funded in the new three-year funding cycle, which began September 1, 2013, have projects comprised of either a Part A component or a combined Part A and Part B component.

• Part A projects provide high-impact HIV prevention services integrated with Title X Family Planning Services. Funded activities include opt-out HIV testing, linkages to care for those who test positive, behavioral interventions for HIV prevention through counseling sessions, condom distribution, and sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening and treatment.
• Part B projects provide enhanced, bi-directional linkage to care services for individuals who test positive for HIV in a family planning service site. These linkages are between Title X Family Planning service sites and Ryan White-funded HIV medical service sites that are either co-located with a Title X site, or that have an established, collaborative relationship with a Title X service site. Some of the Part B projects also provide family planning services for HIV-positive clients either in the family planning or Ryan White-funded HIV medical service site.

Part B is a new initiative for OPA with the goal of establishing an effective and efficient linkage infrastructure to ensure HIV-positive clients identified in Title X Family Planning service sites start HIV medical care shortly after a positive test result and to enhance reproductive health outcomes of HIV-positive clients. Part B project sites will be required to evaluate program outcomes and identify best practices based on their experience.

Most of the 18 grant recipients are implementing more than one project, resulting in 60 projects awarded under Part A and 11 projects under Part B.

OPA has received SMAIF funds since September 2001 and has used those funds, combined with Title X appropriations, to competitively fund HIV prevention projects integrated with Title X family planning services. Read more about this previous OPA initiative, which supports the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) goals and objectives, in this earlier HIV.gov blog post.

For any questions about OPA’s HIV initiative, please contact Vanessa A. White, MPH, Public Health Advisor, at vanessa.white@hhs.gov.