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Alan Franciscus

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HCV Advocate



Showing posts with label DRUG USERS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DRUG USERS. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

[HAP] NASTAD Releases White Paper on Drug User Health and ACA Opportunities‏

With generous support from the Elton John AIDS Foundation, NASTAD is pleased to announce the release of a new white paper: Modernizing Public Health to Meet the Needs of People Who Use Drugs: Affordable Care Act Opportunities. The paper assesses new financing and delivery models for drug user health services. Working with the O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law, the project team focused on coverage and financing opportunities for community-based drug user health and harm reduction services typically not covered by insurance. Research focused on eight states, assessing how health departments, community-based organizations, Medicaid programs and plans and hospitals are working together to better address the needs of people who use drugs.
The need to find creative solutions to ensure that broader health care systems and payers are providing prevention, care, and treatment services for people who use drugs comes in the midst of a public health crisis for this population. Rates of HIV infection and viral hepatitis are substantially higher among persons who use drugs than among persons who do not. Opioid use in particular in the United States is at epidemic proportions. This crisis – coupled with limited federal and state resources for drug user health programs and services – has made leveraging the ACA and partnerships with broader health systems and payers even more critical.
NASTAD has been awarded another year of Elton John AIDS Foundation funding to support a learning collaborative that builds off of the findings of the white paper and supports health departments to partner with broader health care systems and payers to increase access to drug user health services. To see more of NASTAD’s drug user health work, including our Statement of Urgency: Addressing the Opioid Epidemic in the United States and Minimizing Harm, Maximizing Health: The Role of Public Health Programs in Drug User Health, please visit our website.
 For questions, please contact Amy Killelea at akillelea@nastad.org