HCV Case Study

A study by Dr. Eric Chak in 2011 suggested that NHANEs data on HCV prevalence leaves out a large number of those who are predominately affected by HCV, those are the excluded groups of incarcerated, homeless, nursing home residing, deployed, and hospitalized peoples. While NHANES data usually contains PWID or the drug users targeted by our study, the NHANES survey underestimates the number of people living with HCV because it excludes these groups. So state VHPCs were asked to apply these findings and provide the adjustments for excluded groups for each of their states in comparison to the NHANES survey. Not including Kentucky, 102 million people with HCV were not included in the NHANES data for this region and on average 255.2 people were …show more content…
Some states require a specialty medical degrees to be a HCV provider, while certain states only require HCV-related training to be a certified HCV provider sometimes both. It is estimated that there are 164.429 HCV-infected patients per all providers in the region from combining the qualitative data given by states on the number of patients and certified physicians, suggesting that a total of 134,349 patients are denied care due to the legal stipulation that prevents doctors from taking on more than 100 or 30 patients in …show more content…
Even fewer states have Good Samaritan laws that protect IDUs by allowing those with drug paraphernalia to return it to the police without any consequence or contain exceptions that protect those that operate SSPs, currently only Maryland and North Carolina have laws like that. It is necessary that future endeavors address the legal barriers against SSPs and IDUs in general. And with that in mind each of these states is taking measures to either engage legal actors or subvert the law. In comparison, many parts of the nation outside of this region do not have SSPs at all and are making no effort to