God’s Love We Deliver President & CEO Karen Pearl presented yesterday at the American Public Health Association’s Annual Meeting in Denver. APHA’s annual meeting brings together over 12,000 public health professionals from around the world. The theme of this year’s meeting is, “Creating the Healthiest Nation: Ensuring the Right to Health”. Karen, along with co-presenter Angela Aidala, researcher at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health presented their research titled, “Cost and Threshold Analysis of Food and Nutrition Services as an HIV Care and Prevention Intervention”. The study, undertaken in partnership with David Holtgrave and his team from Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, is the second part of a three-part study that will examine whether the provision of food and nutrition services is a healthcare cost saving exercise. The threshold analysis specifically looks at the per client cost of delivering medically informed food pantry, congregate meals, and home delivered meals, and how many HIV transmissions would have to be averted in order to claim cost-effectiveness to society.
The next step will be to undertake a cost-utility analysis that demonstrates, by weaving in other research in the field, how many HIV transmissions are actually averted because of access to food and nutrition services. The research team also presented on outcomes previously analyzed that will inform the cost-utility analysis: reductions in missed appointments, ER visits, and inpatient stays for those people with HIV (PWH) who are food secure. The threshold and utility analyses will go a long way to position food and nutrition services alongside other prevention services and make FNS a more integral part of the care continuum for PWH. We are excited that Karen was able to share these positive results with the rest of the public health world at APHA and look forward to presenting again in the future.