Public Health

HIV, STIs, Viral Hepatitis and LTBI Routine Screening Toolkit: Community outreach

6 MIN READ

A successful routine screening program begins with outreach strategies rooted in engagement outside the community health center’s walls, forming long-term bonds with the community and delivering educational messages that stick.

AMA 6-month Community of Practice on routine screening

AMA seeks community health center and emergency department physicians interested in increasing routine screening for HIV, STIs, viral hepatitis and LTBI.

  • Health care is not a priority compared to income, housing or food insecurity
  • Distrust of institutional health
  • Lack of awareness in the community about the need for routine screening
  • Lack of knowledge on costs and affordability of screening
  • Shortage of access to sites that provide screening
  • Lack of adequate transportation to clinics
  • Misconceptions about disease transmission
  • Fear of finding out one’s status and the associated stigma in the community
  1. Build strong community partnerships

    1. Building trusted relationships is critical to normalizing routine screening. Establishing a referral program through network of affiliates and community, medical and social service organizations, including those organizations who may already be doing community-based testing, will link more patients to your community health center for screening and care.
    2. Related resources

    • Tool for Tracking Partners and Partnership Activities: Pages 81-88 from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Integrating HIV Care, Treatment & Prevention Services into Primary Care–A Toolkit for Health Centers guide includes a Partnership Toolkit that provides a comprehensive list of key considerations, steps and templates to help guide your organizations’ community relationship building and tracking.
    • Partnership Mapping Template (PDF): This template provides a framework to help your organization keep track of relationships with non-clinical services and outpatient clinics that will support both community outreach and a sustainable linkage to care program.
  2. Increase local and digital visibility

    1. More traditional approaches such as on-the-street flyers and targeted social media ads help establish visibility of a clinic’s services and notify the public of its accessibility and affordability.
    2. Related resources

  3. Establish an integrated approach to care

    1. Employ a holistic social determinants of health (SDOH) approach to your care, offering wrap-around services such as mental health care and non-clinical support with employment or housing, to initiate screening and ensure longer term care.
    2. Related resources 

    • Tools for Putting Social Determinants of Health into Action: This CDC webpage compiles a series of tools and resources that health care practitioners can review in order to embed strategies to address social determinants of health in their organization.
    • Health-Related Social Needs Screening Tool (PDF): This resource from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services can help clinicians find out patients’ needs in five core domains including housing instability, food insecurity, transportation problems, utility help needs and interpersonal safety.
    • PRAPARE Screening Tool and Implementation Toolkit: Developed in partnership between the National Association of Community Health Centers, the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations, and the Oregon Primary Care Association the Protocol for Responding to and Assessing Patients’ Assets, Risks, and Experiences (PRAPARE) is a national standardized patient risk assessment protocol designed to engage patients in assessing and addressing social determinants of health.

      Care team training on the SDOH:
  4. Meet patients where they are

    1. Expanding or building partnerships for testing outside of the clinical setting—and bringing it to local clubs, bars, rehab centers or on-the-street mobile clinics—helps overcome transportation barriers and normalize screening in the community.
    2. Related resources

  5. Provide patient-centric education materials

    1. Patient education materials that are linguistically and culturally reflective of populations disproportionately affected (such as Baby Boomers for HCV or refugees for LTBI) help patients overcome shame and understand the need for routine screening. 
    2. Related resources

    3. Patient Education Materials from the CDC: These links compile downloadable patient education materials from the CDC with resources targeted to different patient demographics and available in multiple languages.  

Disclaimer: This page contains resources supplied by third party organizations. Inclusion of these materials on this page does not imply endorsement of these resources or corresponding organization.


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The HIV, STIs, Viral Hepatitis and LTBI Routine Screening Toolkit is organized across the screening continuum and offers helpful resources and best practices for the care team.

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