A bear in the mist with the words "Deconstructing Silos" on it

Community Education Group Issues New Report Warning of Addiction/Hepatitis/HIV “Syndemic” in West Virginia

A bear in the mist with the words "Deconstructing Silos" on it

For Immediate Release

Community Education Group Issues New Report Warning of Addiction/Hepatitis/HIV “Syndemic” in West Virginia

LOST RIVER, W.Va. (May 3, 2021) – A new report issued by the Community Education Group (CEG) details what the organization calls a “syndemic” of Substance Use Disorder, Viral Hepatitis, and HIV that constitutes a grave and ongoing threat to public health in West Virginia.

The report, entitled Deconstructing Silos in West Virginia: Breaking Down Barriers Between HIV, Substance Use Disorder, and Viral Hepatitis Care, describes how misguided policies and gaps in infrastructure are leaving multiple West Virginia counties vulnerable to outbreaks of Hepatitis and HIV, largely driven by the state’s opioid addiction crisis. West Virginia leads the nation in Viral Hepatitis diagnoses, and new HIV diagnoses have been increasing since 2017. The document lays out steps for reversing these trends, such as improving access to testing and treatment, and making sure infected and at-risk patients are referred to the appropriate care and services.

A. Toni Young, CEG’s executive director, emphasized the importance of addressing the linked HIV, Hepatitis, and Substance Use crises together, in a coordinated way.

“Treating these problems as separate epidemics has only inhibited accurate data collection and made effective prevention efforts more difficult,” said Young. “These are linked crises, and here in West Virginia they are turning into a kind of perfect storm that our health infrastructure is currently just not equipped to deal with.”

The new report from CEG, a nonprofit with decades of experience strategizing public health interventions in vulnerable communities, calls for improving public access to testing, treatment, and health information. Other recommendations include beefing up public health staff and infrastructure, and expanding availability of Opioid Treatment and Harm Reduction programs—interventions that have been shown to help decrease HIV and Hepatitis infection rates, but which have been hampered by political opposition that ignores their effectiveness.

The full Deconstructing Silos report can be accessed here: https://cutt.ly/CEG-Deconstructing-Silos-Report

The Community Education Group (CEG) is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization working to ignite community engagement, eliminate disparities in health outcomes, and improve public health in vulnerable populations and underserved communities. CEG accomplishes this by conducting research, training community health workers to educate and test people who are hard to reach or at risk, sharing expertise through national networks and local capacity building efforts, and advocating for practical and effective health policies that lead to social change. 

MEDIA CONTACT:

Community Education Group
A. Toni Young
tyoung@communityeducationgroup.org
(304) 278-4420

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Inaugural West Virginia Statewide Stakeholder Meeting a Resounding Success

#CEGInWV hosted a very successful inaugural West Virginia Statewide Stakeholder Meeting, on Tuesday, September 1st, 2020.

The meeting brought together 65 individuals and organizations, including state government and public health officials, healthcare providers, national organizations, school board officials, Community-Based Organizations, and others from across West Virginia.

CEG’s Founder and Executive Director, A. Toni Young, presented about CEG’s work in the state of West Virginia, including the following:

  1. Working to deconstruct disease state silos between Substance Use Disorder, HIV, and Viral Hepatitis by increasing awareness, education, and building linkage to care networks;
  2. Working to overturn West Virginia’s 2007 legislative moratorium (§16-5Y-12) on new Opioid Treatment Programs that offer Methadone for use as Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT);
  3. Working to expand HIV screening, rapid testing, surveillance, treatment, and linkage to care throughout West Virginia, reaching into hard-to-reach and hard-to-treat parts of the states;
  4. Working with the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health, Department of Health and Human Resources, and Office of Laboratory Services to clarify, adapt, and revise West Virginia’s HIV testing statute (§64-64);
  5. Working to increase Viral Hepatitis vaccination, testing, surveillance, and treatment services throughout the state;
  6. Helping to develop statewide elimination plans for HIV and Viral Hepatitis;
  7. Developing statewide working groups focused on SUD, HIV, and Viral Hepatitis;
  8. Establishing regular statewide stakeholder meetings to discuss strategies for addressing West Virginia’s most pressing public health needs.

Toni was joined by Ana Paula Duarte (Southern AIDS Coalition), Adrienne Simmons (National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable), Nicole Elinoff (National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors – NASTAD), and Mike Weir (NASTAD), all of whom presented on their respective areas of expertise.

The video of this first meeting has been made available on CEG’s YouTube channel (here), and the full meeting was streamed live on CEG’s Facebook page (here). You can also download the slides used during the meeting by clicking on their respective buttons.

Thank you, to everyone who attended this first meeting, and we look forward to working with our partners across West Virginia to build a stronger community, one project at a time.

People Worth Knowing: Katrina Harmon

Katrina Harmon, Executive Director
West Virginia Child Care Association

This week’s #PeopleWorthKnowing interview feature’s Katrina Harmon, Executive Director of the West Virginia Child Care Association (WVCCA).

Katrina Harmon was appointed Executive Director of the WVCCA in March 2017 after serving 2 years as Associate Director.

With years of experience in the non-profit sector, Katrina works with 15 member agencies to provide a voice for the most vulnerable children in West Virginia who have experienced abuse, neglect, emotional and behavioral challenges, substance abuse and/or delinquency.

WVCCA advocates for children and families by sharing member knowledge and resources, embracing partnerships and influencing public policy.

Prior to joining WVCCA, Katrina’s career roles included serving as a non-profit marketing consultant; nearly 10 years as Marketing Manager & Director at the state’s largest cultural arts facility and children’s museum; VP of Sales & Marketing for a construction firm specializing in community revitalization and development; and Account Executive for the Charleston, WV Convention & Visitors Bureau.

She received her Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from West Virginia University and was one of the first graduates of WVU’s cutting-edge Integrated Marketing Communications Master’s degree program in 2005.

Katrina volunteers her time with the Winfield Baptist Church Awana program, and local United Way and 4-H youth programs. She enjoys practicing martial arts with her husband and son.

You can learn more about the West Virginia Child Care Association by visiting their website by clicking on their logo, below, or by Liking their Facebook page by clicking the icon below the logo.

Logo for the West Virginia Child Care Association

Photo of an outline of the state of West Virginia made out of white powder, presumably heroin or cocaine, and a rolled up straw for snorting it

Community Education Group RESPONDS: Misreading the Tea Leaves on West Virginia’s HIV Outbreak

At his recent abstract presentation delivered at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), Dr. R. Paul McClung presented a portrait of a successful HIV intervention in Cabell County, West Virginia. By his estimation, the response to what was then the third HIV outbreak in that state, beginning in January 2018, was a fine example of a successful infectious disease responseMedPage Today described it as “A Blueprint for Public Health Response,” and McClung cited a strong public health infrastructure in the county, including “…a large academic medical center, a large network of community health centers, and a ‘growing capacity to treat substance use disorder,’ such as a syringe service program in place since 2015” (Walker, 2020). Given the consistently negative press both the state and the county receive, this glowing review of Cabell County’s response is a welcome change—but it is also, unfortunately, a largely incomplete portrayal of events as they occurred, and of circumstances on the ground as they still stand.

While the staff of the Cabell-Huntington Health Department, their Harm Reduction Program, and the local community-based organizations and healthcare providers did an excellent job of working together to identify new cases of HIV among People Who Inject Drugs (PWIDs) and others in the county, what Dr. McClung fails to mention is that many—a significant percentage—of those cases identified in Cabell County between January 2018 and December 2019 were patients who were not/are not residents of Cabell County.

Huntington sits on the border of both Kentucky and Ohio and is also surrounded by several rural counties. It serves as one of the primary hubs of drug trafficking in the region, a place where people drive hours and hundreds of miles to get their drugs and, unfortunately, often contract infectious diseases in conjunction with the injection of those drugs. As Dr. McClung’s reporting correctly identified, a majority of the new HIV diagnoses were directly related to Injection Drug Use (IDU). According to the West Virginia Office of Epidemiology and Prevention Services (OEPS), of the 69 new cases identified in 2019, 63 (91.3%) reported IDU as a risk factor (OEPS, 2020). It was not, however, until January of this year (2020) that the state redefined how they count reported cases of HIV, allowing for counties to correctly attribute newly identified cases back to the patients’ counties or states of origin.

Dr. McClung’s reporting leaves out the important fact that little to no investigation has been done on the ground in the rural counties that surround Cabell and Kanawha Counties, the site of the fourth HIV outbreak, identified in 2019. This is not because nobody wants to conduct these investigations, but because the resources simply do not exist for them to be done. Even in Cabell County, the Harm Reduction Program operates with only a handful of staff members for a job that requires ten. In these rural counties, entire county health departments operate with similarly small staffs, yet their responsibilities extend beyond just Harm Reduction and HIV testing. They are also tasked with protecting communities from environmental health risks, and with inspecting houses, institutions, recreational facilities, sewage and wastewater facilities, and drinking water facilities.

When we discuss West Virginia’s response to the inaccurately defined “cluster,” we cannot do so without acknowledging that we do not know whether or not the HIV outbreak was

contained to Cabell (nor if the outbreak in Kanawha Count was contained) simply because neither adequate testing, nor case investigation, has been conducted outside of Cabell and Kanawha Counties. To paint a portrait of a successful public health intervention without addressing the existing gaps in public health infrastructure and surveillance outside of urban areas of rural states is misleading.

When it comes to both drug use and infectious disease, two things are certain: (1) neither are contained solely within urban areas, and (2) both have been growing in rural America for more than a decade. We have yet to effectively grasp or contend with these rural health crises, despite the best efforts of county and state health departments.

Despite Dr. McClung’s accurate observation of Cabell County, there is a greater story to be told and greater needs to be met. We need more resources. We need enough funds dedicated to hiring appropriate staff. We need enough funds to adequately provide infectious disease testing and epidemiological reporting. We need enough funds to provide treatment. Right now, West Virginia’s rural counties lack those resources, putting a strain on Cabell to pick up where they cannot.

References

Driesbach, E. (2020, March 16). Treating patients ‘rapidly and effectively’ helped contain HIV outbreak in West Virginia. Thorofare, NJ: SLACK Incorporated: Healio: Infectious Disease: HIV/AIDS: Meeting News. Retrieved from: https://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/hiv-aids/news/online/%7Bd14dcd…

Office of Epidemiology and Prevention Services. (2020, March 01). HIV Diagnoses by County, West Virginia, 2018-2020. Charleston, WV: West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources: Bureau for Public Health: Office of Epidemiology and Prevention Services. Retrieved from: https://oeps.wv.gov/hiv-aids/documents/data/WV_HIV_2018-2020.pdf

Walker, M. (2020, March 11). West Virginia HIV Outbreak: A Blueprint for Public Health Response – Used four pillars of federal initiative to manage local HIV epidemic. New York, NY: MedPage Today, LLC: Meeting Coverage: CROI. Retrieved from: https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/croi/85378

Community Education Group HEPConnect Ad Example

Community Education Group Launches First HEPConnect Ad Campaign

CEG has launched its first digital media campaign as part of its HEPConnect
grant work. This series of ads will be running in West Virginia newspaper outlets in Cabell, Jefferson, Kanawha, Monongalia, Morgan, and Raleigh Counties.

The ad run schedule is as follows:
March/April 2020 – Cabell/Kanawha
April/May 2020 – Morgan
May/June/July 2020 – Jefferson
June/July 2020 – Raleigh
July/August 2020 – Monongalia