Transforming Latino HIV Care

Founded in 1983 by Central American refugees, La Clínica del Pueblo, a Federally Qualified Health Center, provides comprehensive primary care, mental health, and substance abuse services to a largely Hispanic/Latino population from the Washington DC Metro Area. La Clínica proposes to develop, implement, and evaluate an innovative, culturally appropriate, Practice Transformation Model that will enhance La Clínica’s HIV workforce’s capabilities to optimize patient health outcomes for Latino women and men living with HIV in metropolitan Washington, DC.

La Clínica’s PTM is grounded in the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Model, an evidence-based practice that emphasizes care coordination and service integration to transform primary care into a quality and patient outcome-oriented care approach. The PCMH model combines core tenets of primary care (e.g., continuous, comprehensive and coordinated care) with recent evidence-based practice innovations such as electronic information systems, population-based management of chronic illness, and continuous quality improvement.

La Clínica seeks to implement a cultural and linguistically appropriate team-based delivery of care model that focuses on care coordination and strengthening provider communication, creating stronger synthesis between behavioral and medical care, increasing patient engagement in their own care and the integration of community health workers into the health care team. It is anticipated that the strategies identified by this project will improve organizational capacity to successfully integrate sustainable and replicable service delivery practices. These will enhance La Clínica’s HIV model of care, strengthen its workforce and optimize patient health outcomes along the HIV Care Continuum, with a specific focus on retention in medical care and viral suppression.