Hepatitis C

CommonSpirit Health has committed to growing and integrating capabilities to address medical determinants, including Hepatitis C. In partnership with multiple existing local initiatives focused on the disease, CommonSpirit Population Health strives towards eliminating Hepatitis C across our enterprise.

CommonSprit Population Health’s initial Hepatitis approach is to expand the FOCUS (Frontlines of Communities in the U.S.) Program in partnership with GILEAD Services. Our efforts-to-date include California-based sites in Long Beach, Stockton, and Kern. The FOCUS program aims to:

• Provide routine screenings in ED’s, primary care, and other settings with HCV, HIV, and HBV tests offered.
• Normalize attitudes and de-stigmatize screening and testing.
• Ensure linkages to community and down-stream resources for access to care and improved health outcomes.
• Results in Long Beach (2019): ~10K HIV tests and ~7.2K HCV tests completed. Of the HCV tests completed, 8.72% prevalence rate, much higher than US average (.93%) and California (.3%).

CommonSprit Population Health’s future efforts look to expand on best practices from the initial sites into other markets:

• Two grants were submitted to GILEAD Services in September 2020: California Hospital Medical Center (Los Angeles, California) and St. Joseph’s Hospital Medical Center (Phoenix, Arizona).
• Enterprise Population Health has collaborated with the National Philanthropy/Foundation teams to support:
  • Alignment across markets (IT, analytics, data collection, etc.)
  • Sustainability plans with markets to collaborate with key stakeholders such as physician residency programs.
  • Support for clinical works flows, development of health metrics, medical education,  and a community resources infrastructure for HCV and potentially HIV.

Next steps include a potential “2 nd cohort” of additional markets in early 2021.