SPNS/Fax: An Electronic Report from HRSA/HAB's SPNS Cooperative Agreements:
Volume 3, Issue 15 (July 24, 1998)

Information dissemination from 27 Innovative Models of HIV Care projects funded as Special Projects of National Significance by the HIV/AIDS Bureau (HAB) of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

Introduction

Welcome to SPNS/Fax: An Electronic Report from HRSA/HAB's SPNS Cooperative Agreements. In each issue of SPNS/Fax, we will highlight findings from the HRSA Special Projects of National Significance Program Cooperative Agreements. The projects have been funded to develop innovative models of HIV/AIDS care. SPNS/Fax reports are distributed every two weeks by fax machine to all subscribers. All issues of SPNS/Fax are also available at this Web site. Due to slight differences in the media, issues distributed by fax machine may appear slightly different from those posted on this Web site, but the content is identical.

SUNY MAPS Project Monitors HIV Counseling and Testing Rates in Brooklyn Hospitals

One of the primary goals of the SUNY Maternal and Pediatric Services (MAPS) of Brooklyn project is to promote early identification of HIV infection in pregnant women. (See SPNS/Fax Volume 2, Issue 14, 7/11/97 and Volume 2, Issue 23, 11/14/97.) The MAPS project tracked counseling and testing rates across nine three-month periods (quarters) in three different hospitals (N = 11,102 prenatal patients). In the findings presented below, tracking began on January 1, 1996 and continued through March 31, 1998. The three different hospitals in the SPNS network include a teaching hospital, a municipal hospital and a community-based hospital. All received assistance from the MAPS project in developing HIV counseling and testing procedures for pregnant women.

Using a visual tree generated from a statistical method called CHAID (Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection), we can view general trends in the MAPS data. The method obtains a statistically optimal "cut" of the data so that we can observe which counseling and testing rates tend to behave similarly across quarters and hospitals. Quarters and hospitals are grouped together when there is no statistically significant difference between them.

In the top box of the figure below, we can see that more than three-quarters of all prenatal patients tracked by the MAPS project received counseling and testing. The highest percentages of women receiving counseling and testing occurred in Quarters 4, 6, and 9. The lowest percentage of counseling and testing occurred in the first quarter when the project had just begun tracking women.

With the CHAID method, we can compare counseling and testing rates between the community, municipal and teaching hospitals. In general, the community hospital had lower rates of counseling and testing than did the municipal hospital and the teaching hospital in most quarters. One possible reason that the community hospital has had difficulty in reaching all of its pregnant women is that it has a number of satellite clinics that do not have designated HIV counselors. In the final quarter, however, all hospitals had extremely high counseling and testing rates. Thus, these trends indicate that these hospitals are making progress in achieving the goal of universal access to HIV counseling and testing for pregnant women.

For further information about the MAPS project, contact Catherine Rohweder, SUNY-HSCB SPNS Program, 450 Clarkson Avenue, Box #1240, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, 718.270.1846, 718.270.4244 (fax), crohweder@netmail.hscbklyn.edu (e-mail). For more information about the CHAID method or visual trees such as the one presented in this SPNS/Fax, see the web site of The Measurement Group at www.TheMeasurementGroup.com.

SPNS/Fax is produced by The Measurement Group–PROTOTYPES Evaluation and Dissemination Center (EDC). Editorial comments should be made to The Measurement Group at 5811A Uplander Way, Culver City, California 90230, 310.216.1051, 310.670.7735 (fax).
 

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