Current Projects » AIDSRelief
2004 – 2012
Providing Treatment, Restoring Hope
As part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration, this 10-country project provides rapid scaleup of antiretroviral therapy (ART). Futures Group is collaborating with a consortium led by Catholic Relief Services that includes Catholic Medical Mission Board, Interchurch Medical Assistance, and University of Maryland Institute for Human Virology.
The consortium’s goal is to ensure that people living with HIV/AIDS have access to ART and can be retained in high-quality medical care. The AIDSRelief team is extending ART to the greatest possible number of patients in its target countries, consistent with good medical science, national priorities and programs, and cost-effective deployment of program resources. Priority countries include Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. More than 143,500 patients are currently receiving quality ART through AIDSRelief.
Futures Group is leading the project’s strategic information component across diverse local partner treatment facilities. Using in-country networks and innovative technology, we are building a strong, sustainable system for clinical records and program information that can be uniformly used to collect and track data. This information is essential to providing high-quality care and treatment regimens, ensuring drug durability, tracking progress, and reporting accurately. Although reporting results to donors and governments is essential, the primary purposes of collecting clinical information are to assist clinicians and managers in providing high-quality chronic disease care and to build sustainable care systems. We are also monitoring viral suppression and building capacity for an improved data culture in recipient countries.
Success Story: Data System Improves Care, Helps Disseminate Knowledge
Before joining AIDSRelief, a clinic in Nsambya, Uganda, relied on a manual paper-based system for keeping clinical records. Access to data was difficult, and generating reports or doing accurate drug procurement was practically impossible. Futures Group / AIDSRelief introduced and implemented a patient monitoring and management system (PMM) designed specially for HIV-positive patients, which transformed record keeping and helped staff gain the ability to access and use information easily: for example, they can now forecast how many patients will need certain drugs. Every week an interdisciplinary staff team assembles to discuss difficult cases. They can view and analyze data from the PMM together, enhancing comprehensive patient care.
We build sustainable capacity by training local experts. Using training modules, technical assistance, and a continuous quality improvement model that respond to the needs of physicians, hospital administrators, ministries of health, and donors, we help local partner treatment facilities (LPTFs) develop strong patient clinical records and a data use culture that underlies all successful PMMs.
Examples of Key Results Achieved by Futures Group
We have established strategic information systems that meet standards established by local governments in over 200 LPTFs in eight countries.
We created a library of solutions of patient monitoring and management systems: over 150 LPTFs are using these systems to track patient data and improve care and treatment.
Facilitated by Futures Group (and in collaboration with other consortium members), LPTFs are using patient management tools to improve patient care and program management. Our training and assistance has notably improved the information culture at these sites, and personnel are embracing strategic information for planning and clinical management. For example, sites are now able to:
- Schedule patients on a daily basis
- Understand which patients are collecting their antiretroviral therapy early or late
- Report accurately to the Ministry of Health and to donors on routine basis
- Analyze data to look at health outcomes, and disseminate the information to ensure improved program performance and patient outcomes.
Countries
Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.