The National Hemophilia Foundation (NHF) has received a five-year cooperative agreement from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The collaboration, which gives NHF $500,000 a year for five years, will be used to support educational programs for patients and healthcare providers in three key areas: inhibitor awareness, treatment for men with hemophilia, and women with bleeding disorders.
“We consider the CDC to be true partners of NHF,” said Kate Nammacher, vice president for education at NHF. “The cooperative agreement allows us to collaborate with them and access their insight and expertise.”
Many of NHF’s programs have been funded exclusively through the cooperative agreement with the CDC. NHF’s outreach to undiagnosed women with bleeding disorders, Better You Know, as well as the supporting educational materials for women and healthcare providers, was created through the agreement. NHF’s Guías Culturales program, which provides peer support for Spanish-speaking members of the bleeding disorders community, the update of NHF’s popular Playing It Safe book, the needs assessment of Black and African American communities with bleeding disorders, and videos promoting awareness of inhibitors were also developed under the agreement.
For the next five years, NHF plans to expand its outreach efforts with Better You Know, develop programs to help adherence in men with bleeding disorders, and further address health inequities as they affect the bleeding disorders community, among other projects. “We’re establishing a health equity working group, which will look across all our educational programming with a health equity lens to identify key underserved communities and bring them into the planning process to best address their needs,” said Nammacher.
The new cooperative agreement will go into effect on September 30, 2020.