AMPATH’s HIV Care Platform as a Global Model for Non-Communicable Diseases

AMPATH staff measure blood pressures at a community screening in Turbo county, Kenya.

Over the years, AMPATH’s highly successful HIV care platform has expanded into a seamless care system, responding to the needs of the whole patient and community. As population health with universal health care continues to show impact, AMPATH is becoming a global model for treating non-communicable diseases or “NCDs”.

NCDs such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and mental health disorders are the leading cause of death and disability globally, especially impacting low-income countries where care is limited.

The top global academic journal on HIV recently published a special issue on NCDs and HIV care that spotlighted AMPATH’s global contributions to care and research in this area. AMPATH researchers authored five of the 12 articles in the July 2018 issue of AIDS, the official International AIDS Society Journal. They included AMPATH-affiliated researchers from Moi University, Indiana University, Purdue University, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, and University of Texas at Austin.

AMPATH authors contributed lessons from HIV care to topics including:

• Models of integration of HIV and NCD care in sub-Saharan Africa
• Global partnerships to support NCD care in low and middle-income countries
• Building reliable supply chains for NCD commodities

Based on AMPATH’s lessons learned in HIV, several articles revealed that advances achieved through HIV initiatives can be readily transferrable to NCD treatment systems and supply chains with minimal additional investments.

Several authors also presented HIV and NCD-related research at AIDS 2018 in Amsterdam, the largest global conference on HIV and AIDS. More than 30 papers and posters at the conference were present by AMPATH researchers.