Health Connect Jamaica (HCJ), through the support of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), is reimagining Jamaica’s health care system for people living with HIV. HCJ is a USAID local partner and service provider in Jamaica building a network of clinicians, psychologists, labs, and pharmacies to serve patients living with HIV/AIDS, specifically low-income individuals who face additional challenges to receiving care. HCJ enhances Jamaica's HIV care by connecting private sector health services and data to the public database, which helps identify and support more people living with HIV.
Through Health Connect Jamaica, patients have more options for where and when they receive care. They can speak with their provider outside of working hours and every Health Connect Jamaica patient is connected with a case manager who can offer personalized support for challenging life events.
“Personalized interventions such as daily check-ins from the case manager, assistance with medication pick-up, decentralized drug delivery, and providing psychological and social support can help people living with HIV better adhere to their life-saving HIV treatment,” says Dr. Alicia Webster, Director of Health Connect Jamaica.
Meet three Health Connect Jamaica providers who are making HIV services more accessible, affordable, and convenient:
Dr. Orville Nembhard
Dr. Nembhard has been practicing medicine for almost 40 years and has been caring for people living with HIV since the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Jamaica. “In the early days access to medication was very limited and even when you would write a prescription for HIV treatment my patients would be too fearful of their status being exposed to go to the pharmacy to pick it up,” he says. In the 1990s, Dr. Nembhard himself procured HIV treatment and distributed it to his clients at his practice to make sure that they received it. Today, HIV is treated as a chronic illness – but people have to be able to access services to get treated. “Partnering with Health Connect Jamaica was a no-brainer,” said Dr. Nembhard who can now see more patients at his practice.
Claudette Ellis
Many people living with HIV in Jamaica prefer to use community-based pharmacies because of the convenience and personal relationship they have with their pharmacist. Claudette owns and operates K’s pharmacy in Duhaney Park (a parish in Kingston, Jamaica) – one of the largest private, community-based pharmacy distributors of HIV medication in Jamaica. The Government of Jamaica provides all HIV treatment to its citizens free of charge. Patients have the option of accessing private pharmacies to pick up their medication at a minimum service charge. Health Connect Jamaica covers the cost of this script fee for financially vulnerable patients.
Eunice Griffiths
Eunice Griffiths remembers administering the first HIV test ever conducted in Jamaica as an immunologist working for Jamaica’s Ministry of Health and Wellness. Back in the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Eunice says that people were scared to get tested, “People were being turned out of their homes because of a positive test,” she says. Today in Jamaica, through education and knowledge sharing, the attitudes and perceptions towards people living with HIV have changed, and more people are accessing HIV testing services. Health Connect Jamaica covers the cost of all lab tests associated with HIV services to help low-income individuals access important HIV testing services. Tests that are covered include HIV testing, viral load testing (how much of the HIV virus is in your body), and CD4 count (how well your immune system is functioning).
In addition to the financial support that it provides to its low-income clients, the organization also offers training and resources to its network of providers on topics including treating people living with HIV, electronic medical records, and health care accounting. The training and resources provided by Health Connect Jamaica are helping community-based providers meet the standards of care set by the Jamaican Ministry of Health.
Today, Health Connect Jamaica is providing HIV services to over 800 patients through its network of community-based providers. “People deserve a choice when it comes to their health care so that they can decide which provider or location works best for them,” says Dr. Webster. “We are proud to be offering people living with HIV more options for their care.”