Clinic-Community Bridge to Improve Health Outcomes for Abused Women Living With HIV/AIDS

Overview

Women living with HIV/AIDS (WLWHA) in Baltimore experience disproportionately high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV), housing instability, and food insecurity, which adversely affect health outcomes. The Bartlett Bridges study is being implemented in partnership with the John G. Bartlett Infectious Diseases Specialty Practice (Bartlett Clinic) located at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Bartlett Clinic provides comprehensive, compassionate and equitable services for infectious disease prevention, diagnosis and care. The study team will adapt and evaluate a trauma and violence-informed care (TVIC) intervention, called Confidentiality, Universal Education and Empowerment and Support (CUES), enhanced with the evidence-based myPlan safety planning app in the Bartlett Clinic to address IPV, health and safety in partnership with community organizations that provide advocacy, housing and social services. This hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial aims to improve HIV and mental health outcomes, increase safety, reduce health disparities, and identify implementation mechanisms to inform future scale-up and sustainability of the intervention in healthcare settings.

Objectives Aim 1: Using the ADAPT-ITT framework, the clinic-community partners will collaboratively adapt/design the CUES intervention enhanced with myPlan and connections to community organizations (CUES+) to meet the complex health and safety needs of abused WLWHA. The Hopkins team and members of the investigator's clinic-community advisory board (CAB) will collaborate to adapt and design the CUES+ intervention. Aim 2: Examine the effectiveness of the CUES+ intervention in reducing health disparities for abused WLWHA. All WLWHA clients will receive CUES+ through the clinic-community partnership. Primary outcomes (ART adherence, missed visits/proportion of visits missed, treatment adherence self-efficacy) and mental health (depression, PTSD) will be measured at baseline, 6-, and 12-months post baseline. The investigators hypothesize IPV(+) WLWHA will have poorer outcomes than IPV(-) WLWHA at baseline. After the CUES+ intervention, outcomes for IPV(+) WLWHA will approach the level of outcomes for IPV(-) WLWHA. Aim 3: Assess the mechanisms, facilitators, and barriers to implementation of clinic-community CUES+ intervention. Aim 3a: Mechanisms (e.g., safety behaviors/resources, IPV exposure, housing stability, food security) by which CUES+ intervention improves primary outcomes will be examined. The investigators hypothesize the intervention will increase safety behaviors and resources, housing stability and food security and reduce IPV exposure resulting in improvements in primary health outcomes. An understanding of mechanisms will identify clinic-community organizational culture, resources and policies needed to sustain the partnership. Aim 3b: Examine clinic-community-based partners contextual and program factors that facilitate the intervention and are needed to sustain the partnerships. The investigators will also examine barriers and facilitators to the intervention from the perspectives of clinicians and community-based partners to inform future implementation and scale-up.