DKBmed Partnering with the Convenient Care Association to Deliver HIV Education
NEW YORK (6/16/2021) – DKBmed, LLC has developed a virtual symposia series to educate health care providers on the importance of routine HIV screening. The program, entitled Convenient Care HIV, was featured for one week in May at the Convenient Care Association’s monthlong Virtual 2021 symposium, which was marketed to its extensive network of convenient care providers. Video recordings are available on the DKBmed website.
Screening for HIV has been recommended for many years. Screening identifies people who have undiagnosed or untreated HIV and who should be treated for HIV. The Department of Health and Human Services recommends initiating HIV treatment immediately (or as soon as possible) after diagnosis to reduce time to viral suppression. HIV treatment which protects the individual with HIV and also reduces onward transmission. Conversations about screening may help identify people who are at risk of HIV and who may be eligible for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a medication that reduces the risk of acquiring. However, people who are not receiving regular health care may be missing the recommended HIV screenings and conversations.
To bridge this gap, educational initiatives must also target the clinicians who work in convenient care clinics (CCCs), medical clinics operating within a retail store. Approximately two-thirds of individuals who visit CCCs do not have a primary care provider. Importantly, most convenient clinic users are young and middle-aged adults between 18-44 years of age, an age group that accounts for around 75% of new HIV diagnoses. As the ubiquity of CCCs rise nationwide, so too does the need to ensure that care providers in these settings have the training and tools necessary to address patient needs.
“Results from surveys suggest that care providers operating in CCCs have a hard time starting conversations with patients who have HIV or with those who have a high risk of contracting it,” notes Melinda Pipik, MS, FNP-BC, Sexual Health Peer Mentor for CVS and faculty member of Convenient Care HIV. “Educating these clinicians on how to initiate screening conversations and giving them the tools to move forward with same-day initiation of treatment is vital to ongoing efforts to end the HIV epidemic.”
Convenient Care HIV was broken out into three, separate sessions played sequentially throughout the week. This segmented design enables clinicians to participate in a manner most convenient for them. After the lectures, clinicians were also extended the opportunity to practice what they learned by interacting with standardized patients in small group settings. Participants took turns initiating conversations about HIV screening, prevention, and treatment with these patients, and learned more by interacting and watching their peers. Standardized patients provided feedback on clinician performance and provide concrete suggestions for improvement as warranted.
About the Convenient Care Association
Established in October 2006, the Convenient Care Association is a national trade association of companies and healthcare systems that supplies consumers with accessible, affordable, and high-quality healthcare in retail-based locations. Since the first Convenient Care clinics opened in 2000, the industry has grown dramatically. Today, there are over 3,300 CCCs across Canada, Mexico, and the United States and more than half of the U.S. population lives within a 10-minute drive of a CCC. To date, CCCs have provided more than 50 million patient visits and can be found in 44 states, as well as the District of Columbia. For more information on the Convenient Care Association, visit their website at: https://www.ccaclinics.org/ .
About DKBmed
DKBmed is an integrated continuing medical education company operated by an experienced team of medical education experts. DKBmed provides health care professionals with effective medical education that closes identified knowledge and practice gaps to improve patient health.Working with accredited providers and other partners, DKBmed develops innovative educational programs and quality improvement (QI) initiatives, bringing new learning methodologies to the CME landscape. DKBmed has become a leader in QI in the independent medical education space with QI projects in Pain Management, HIV, Depression, Influenza, and Diabetic Eye Disease. DKBmed was also an early adopter of case scenarios with real patients and live actors, TED/DKBmed Talks, 3D animation, webcasts, podcasts, and smart phone applications for clinicians and patients. These forward-thinking approaches enable health care professionals to learn and access educational programs in a manner that is most convenient and appropriate for them.
DKBmed’s programs are accessible through the company’s website (www.dkbmed.com). They reach more than 150,000 health care professionals in primary care and in a variety of specialties and disease states including: HIV, COVID-19, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, influenza, dermatology, retinal disease, rheumatoid arthritis, COPD, asthma, multiple sclerosis, pain management, depression and viral hepatitis (HBV, HCV) and oncology.