5. Addressing social determinants of health
- Release date: Friday, October 9, 2020
- Style: On demand- webcast
- Focus: Balance between both (e.g. Presentation of a best-practice guideline that combines research evidence, policy issues and practical steps for implementation)
- Target Audience: Clinical providers,Representatives of stakeholder/partner organizations
Learning Objectives
- Review the barriers to curing Hepatitis C including the social determinants of health
- Describe a primary care -based approach to curing Hepatitis C
- Review a custom EMR decision-support tool for Hepatitis C treatment
- Discuss potential provider and patient supports
- Discuss practical tools and lessons learned in the practice setting
Summary/Abstract
Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) causes significant morbidity and mortality in Canada. The highest rates of Hepatitis C are among immigrant and indigenous populations, as well as injection drug users. New anti-viral agents can cure the disease, but still many patients remain untreated. Barriers include lack of primary care team comfort with treatment and patient struggles with the social determinants of health. Our workshop will support participants to cure HCV among their own patient population. We will share. the work we have done at the St. Michael’s Academic Family Health Team to identify and treat HCV in our patient population of 49,000 patients at six clinics in Toronto’s inner city. Participants will learn from our approach to identify patients eligible for HCV treatment and support providers and patients to cure the disease.
Our initiative was two-pronged. First, we built clinician capacity to treat HCV using educational sessions, mentorship, inter-professional support, and creation of a new EMR decision-support tool. Second, we proactively reached out to patients needing treatment using phone, letter, and email. We will present results from our initiative, including the percentage of patients with active HCV who had started treatment before and after our intervention as well findings from qualitative interviews with patients and providers. We will review lessons learned and discuss how the initiative could be modified for other settings. Practical tools will be presented that can be adapted to other practice settings including, an EMR decision-support tool to support treatment, sample internal treatment pathways that engage the inter-professional team, and templates to support patient outreach. With sustained effort from primary care teams across the province, we believe this burdensome illness can be eliminated.
Presenters
- Ann Stewart, Staff Physician, Assistant Professor, St. Michael's Hospital Family Health Team, University of Toronto
- Tara Kiran, Staff Physician, St. Michael's Hospital Family Health Team
- Doret Cheng, Clinical Pharmacy Practitioner, St. Michael's Hospital Family Health Team
- Amy Craig-Neil, Research Coordinator, MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions
Authors
- Ann Stewart, Staff Physician, Assistant Professor, St. Michael's Hospital Family Health Team, University of Toronto
- Tara Kiran, Staff Physician, St. Michael's Hospital Family Health Team
- Doret Cheng, Clinical Pharmacy Practitioner, St. Michael's Hospital Family Health Team
- Amy Craig-Neil, Research Coordinator, MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions