The Harm Reduction Coalition awarded $5.3 million in grant funding to organizations fighting hepatitis C on Tuesday, with almost a million going to organizations in West Virginia.
Morgantown’s Milan Puskar Health Right received $127,500, according to Daniel Raymond, deputy director of planning and policy for the National Harm Reduction Coalition. In total, six West Virginia organizations will receive $929,000.
“This is great, especially for this type of program. This is going to be huge for us,” said Shamus Cleveland, grants manager for Health Right.
“We wrote in the grant that we’re going to expand our harm reduction program and also our hep C services,” Cleveland said. “We’re going to try and get more screenings out of this.”
Health Right also plans to hire a harm reduction coordinator to travel to counties around Monongalia to teach others about harm reduction, Emily Baldwin, clinical coordinator said. Cleveland specifically mentioned Doddridge and Wetzel counties as areas of interest.
The clinic has also wanted to hire a patient navigator to help its patients navigate the red tape that comes not just when dealing with insurance companies, but with any medical problem, Cleveland said.
The money for the grants was provided by HepConnect, a five-year project funded by Gilead Sciences. The program was announced in June in Morgantown and aims to address the sharp increase hepatitis C infections related to opioid use and its stigma in five states — West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky and Indiana, according to the HRC.
Gilead Sciences felt it was important it brought its expertise in dealing with hepatitis C and resources to bear in the fight against the public health challenge, said Arun Skaria, public affairs director.
“I think that the core takeaway is we want to make sure that folks at the center of the challenge are the center of the solution,” Skaria said, adding it was important to support local organizations already on the frontlines.
To help find those local organizations, the HRC was appointed as the lead grantee for HepConnect and came up with a plan to distribute the funds. Raymond said.
The first step was listening, Raymond said. The HRC spoke with people already doing meaningful work to prevent hepatitis C among people who use drugs to find out what was working and what was needed.
Next a request for proposal was created and a panel of regional and national experts was assembled to review the submissions. Raymond said $15 million worth of proposals were submitted and with just over $5 million to give away, meaning roughly one-in-three proposals were funded.
“The reviewers were very thoughtful and very clear about wanting to do right by the region and so we followed their lead and used their input and came out with the final list,” Raymond said.
Right out of the gate the HRC knew it wanted to focus on West Virginia and Tennessee — two areas with a high need, Raymond said. The reviewers also wanted to boost applications that showed promise as beacons of best practice and innovation and boost the work being done to a higher level.
Raymond said the hope is these grants will be the start of a long-term relationship. There will be phone calls to share strategies and learn from each other as well as technical assistance for organizations that need it, Raymond said.
“We really want to build a community from these grants that works strongly together,” Raymond said.
HepConnect is a five-year program and Skaria said after the current 18-month grant period more resources will be distributed based on evaluations of the work. Additional grants will also be issued to expand screening and improve linkage to care, as well as improve healthcare infrastructure, the other two pillars of HepConnect
“This is just the harm reduction and community education pillar of HepConnect,” Skaria said.
