NIH awarded over $7,000,000 for 3 years to the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO) to develop new Health IT strategies. The plan is to increase screening for chronic Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) to reduce the impact of Hepatitis B among high-risk Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) populations.
Many AAPIs with chronic HBV are not receiving the care that they need and are disproportionately impacted by this disease. It happens that over half of the estimated 2 million people infected with HBV in the U.S. are AAPIs.
This is going to be the first study to research how health IT can improve HBV outcomes for medically underserved AAPI populations at risk and infected with HBV. This research challenge will be accomplished with the help of one of the AAPI member community health centers called International Health Services (ICHS).
The project will enable AAPCHO and ICHS to use health IT to improve care at the provider and patient level. The project will work to create health IT tools that will help diagnose health problems sooner, reduce medical errors, and provide safer and more comprehensive care.
Through the use of health IT, providers will be able to give HBV testing and vaccination reminders to patients, work with ICHS to conduct interviews, surveys, and focus groups, and use the findings to develop culturally tailored HBV interventions that incorporate health IT.