Kaiser Permanente publicizes its values as a matter of life and death

For 30 years, Kaiser Permanente has aggressively treated every person on its health plan rolls infected with HIV with the latest technology, drugs, and medical practices. In addition to surpassing the national average regarding detection, treatment, and virus control, Kaiser Permanente’s patients receive no treatment disparities among black and Latino HIV-positive patients and have an HIV-mortality rate half the national average.

Thousands of lives have been saved. 

On Jan. 26, 2012, Kaiser Permanente announced its HIV Challenge campaign at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation’s Care Innovations Summit in Washington, D.C.

The idea of the campaign: Help health care providers across the country improve health equity for people with HIV by increasing access to HIV care and boosting health outcomes based on Kaiser Permanente’ best practices.

Kaiser pledged to give health care providers and community health clinics:

• Kaiser Permanente’s clinical best practices.
• Patient and provider education materials.
• Mentoring and training.
• Health IT expertise.
• Quality-improvement programs that measure gaps in care.
• Prevention and treatment guidelines.
• Ways to set up multidisciplinary care teams that model the “medical home” so that HIV specialists, care managers, clinical pharmacists, and providers work together.

To get this done, Kaiser set up a program-wide best practices toolkit and website to share knowledge and spur participation in its HIV Challenge. Kaiser also shot four videos of KP experts on HIV and of KP members with HIV. 

Kaiser Permanente’s HIV Challenge achieved spectacular results:

• The press release about the HIV Challenge generated 300+ news postings, 200 social media posts, and stories carried by The Associated Press, UPI, KCBS Radio, and Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer.
• The executive director of the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved publicized the HIV Challenge to the association’s 8,000 clinicians and 900 organizations.
• The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation blog New Public Health ran an article about the HIV Challenge.
• The HIV Challenge website was viewed almost 6,000 times, the KPLink story was viewed 1,125 times, and the HIV videos were viewed 1,400 times.

Thousands of lives will be saved because of Kaiser Permanente’s 2012 decision to take its health plan fight against HIV nationwide to raise awareness of life-saving protocols and team-medicine practices that are a part of Kaiser’s everyday culture, and to make KP’s best practices standard in every town and city in America.

That’s why Kaiser Permanente’s HIV Challenge campaign wins top honors in the Best Social Responsibility Campaign/Initiative category of PR Daily’s 2013 Nonprofit PR Awards.

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