Dissemination of Evidence Informed Interventions to Improve Health Outcomes along the HIV Care Continuum Dissemination and Evaluation Center | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) announced this fiscal year 2015 funding opportunity to support one national organization to serve as the Dissemination and Evaluation Center (DEC) for a new Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) initiative focused on improving outcomes along the HIV Care Continuum, with a clear emphasis on increasing viral suppression. The DEC is intended to act as both a dissemination hub and an evaluator, meaning it is responsible not only for packaging and spreading proven intervention approaches but also for rigorously assessing how well those approaches work when implemented in real-world HIV care settings. Funding is provided as a cooperative agreement for up to five years, and the project is designed to help HIV care organizations replicate evidence-informed interventions quickly and effectively by offering practical implementation tools, technical guidance, and evaluation-driven lessons learned.

A major feature of the program is that the DEC must adapt and prepare four interventions so they are implementation-ready for today’s healthcare environment. These interventions are drawn from earlier SPNS and related initiatives: Enhancing Linkages for Those Newly Released from Jails (the SPNS Jails Initiative, 2007-2012), Integrating Buprenorphine Opioid Abuse Treatment in HIV Primary Care (the Buprenorphine Initiative, 2004-2009), Targeted HIV Outreach and Intervention Model Development and Evaluation for Underserved HIV-Positive Populations Not in Care (the SPNS Outreach Initiative, 2001-2006), and the Secretary’s Minority AIDS Initiative Fund Retention and Re-Engagement Project (also known as the Peer Re-Engagement Project, 2011-2014). The intent is to take what was learned in those earlier projects and translate it into practical, current, step-by-step interventions that Ryan White-funded provider organizations can integrate into their ongoing change management and quality improvement efforts.

During Year 1, the DEC’s work is front-loaded with product development and planning. The center is expected to produce four adapted interventions in a form that is ready for adoption by clinical sites. It must also create web-based dissemination materials for each intervention, explaining in plain operational terms what the intervention consists of, the theory or rationale behind it, the specific activities involved, staffing models, training requirements, and any available cost information. The funding announcement expects these materials to be grounded in evidence, so the DEC must also compile and reference existing publications, evaluation reports, and journal articles that support the intervention’s evidence-informed status. Each intervention is required to have its own dedicated webpage on the existing TARGET Center website (Technical Assistance Resources, Guidance, Education and Training), essentially turning the TARGET platform into the primary public-facing repository where other HIV service organizations can learn about and replicate the approaches.

Year 1 is also when the DEC designs the multi-site evaluation plan that will be carried out later. This evaluation is expected to look at fidelity (whether sites implement the intervention as intended), effectiveness (whether implementation leads to improved outcomes), and costs (what it takes to implement and sustain the intervention). The evaluation is structured around implementation by up to 12 performance sites, which are selected and funded through a separate mechanism. That separation is important: the DEC does not fund the clinical sites directly under this opportunity, but it must coordinate closely with the broader initiative so that evaluation data collection and reporting can happen consistently across sites.

The DEC is not operating alone. The initiative includes an Implementation Technical Assistance Center (ITAC), funded through a different funding opportunity announcement (HRSA 15-130), and the DEC must collaborate closely with that ITAC. In practice, that means the DEC leads the development of intervention-specific implementation plans while partnering with the ITAC to translate those plans into hands-on technical assistance agendas for performance sites. Those agendas include structured site visit protocols developed by the ITAC with input from the DEC. This division of labor continues in Years 2 through 4: the ITAC focuses on implementation technical assistance, while the DEC focuses on evaluation technical assistance and evaluation operations, including ensuring the sites collect the right outcome, process, and cost data in a usable and comparable way.

In Years 2 through 4, the DEC runs the multi-site evaluation while the selected performance sites implement one of the adapted interventions in their clinical settings. The DEC’s responsibilities in this period include coordinating data collection, providing guidance on evaluation methods and reporting, and analyzing how implementation plays out across different real-world environments. The expectation is that the findings will go beyond simple outcome reporting and will capture the practical barriers and facilitators that affect replication, including workflow impacts, staffing realities, training burdens, and cost considerations. As results emerge, the DEC is expected to revise and strengthen the web-based intervention materials already posted on the TARGET Center website so that future adopters benefit from the newest lessons and refinements rather than relying on static guidance.

Dissemination is treated as equally important as evaluation in this announcement. The DEC must actively publish and spread findings from the initiative, including best practices, lessons learned, and cost analyses, with the explicit goal of accelerating replication by other HIV care organizations. In other words, the DEC is meant to function like a national translation engine, taking interventions that have evidence behind them, testing how they perform when scaled into routine practice across multiple sites, and then converting those insights into practical tools that make broader rollout faster and more reliable.

The opportunity was posted under Funding Opportunity Number HRSA 15-030, within CFDA 93.928 (Special Projects of National Significance). HRSA anticipated making one award, with an estimated total funding amount of $500,000, and there is no cost sharing or matching requirement listed. Eligible applicants include public entities and nonprofit private entities that are eligible for funding under Parts A through D of Title XXVI of the Public Health Service Act (as amended by the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009), which can include academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, and faith-based organizations. The announcement also allows applications from certain U.S. territories and associated jurisdictions and from Indian Tribes or tribal organizations. The closing date was listed as June 23, 2015 (with an original closing date of June 22, 2015), and HRSA provided a program contact for applicants needing assistance.

At a practical level, HRSA is signaling that the strongest DEC applicants should already have demonstrated capacity to manage national, multi-site evaluations and to translate complex interventions into clear, user-friendly implementation packages. The emphasis on viral suppression and care continuum outcomes suggests HRSA is looking for evaluation designs that can connect implementation quality to measurable clinical and engagement outcomes, while also producing realistic cost information and operational guidance that Ryan White provider organizations can use without having to reinvent the model.

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