Black AIDS Institute Co-Hosts Affordable Care Act Boot Camp in NYC

Although the Affordable Care Act (ACA) means that more PLWHA will have access to better-quality health care, many AIDS service organizations and community-based organizations face unique challenges. Some of those obstacles include enrolling clients in health insurance plans when the health insurance marketplace opens on Oct. 1, ensuring that the services the organizations offer are billable by private and public insurance and integrating services in order to keep their doors open. "We know that the HIV landscape is changing and is demanding HIV organizations to have a very different skill set," says Raniyah M. Copeland, director of training and capacity building for the Black AIDS Institute. "In the past a lot of organizations and even federal government agencies focused on behavior and prevention, but now the focus is on getting people's virus suppressed, and for the organizations who cannot do that, they will be irrelevant."

The message is clear: It's time to retool. And yet so many organizations across the U.S. feel disempowered when it comes to actually making these types of changes.

Where do they start?

To help address this knowledge gap and gauge where organizations are, the Black AIDS Institute, with the help of AIDS United and the Latino Commission on AIDS, hosted the first-ever Affordable Care Act Boot Camp in New York City. This past June, more than 15 organizations from across the country participated in the two-day sessions that addressed a range of topics, among them partnering with other local organizations, developing strategies around biomedical interventions, the importance of Medicaid billing and a complete explanation of the ACA.

Wendy Kelly, executive director of the Project of the Quad Cities--an HIV/AIDS organization serving five cities along the Illinois-Iowa border--admitted that while the project has begun to make some of these changes, there is still a lot of confusion for her about the ACA and what it means for the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program in her area of Illinois. Although she still had questions afterward, Kelly was thankful that the ACA was covered in some of the sessions.

"It's been so hard for our organization to get a straight answer from my state," Kelly says. "I continue to work through it; it's hard to get someone to respond. There is no instruction book."

Another participant, Hana Hawthorne, a mental-health therapist at Aniz, Inc. in Atlanta, says that the event was informative and entertaining. It also made her feel that she wasn't alone.

"It was very entertaining and fun. I met a lot of people who do the same work that I do and share some of the same concerns I have," Hawthorne says. "One major takeaway was that all of us have to work harder at strengthening partnerships with other local organizations, because if we cannot do that, we might lose our funding."

Given the success of the boot camp and the need for it on a national level, the Institute plans on expanding this program down the road. "We want to do more in certain regions because the ACA and Medicaid look different state by state," Copeland says.

In the meantime, for organizations that could not attend the boot camp or are struggling to keep their organization afloat, Hawthorne stresses the need to stay optimistic and not be afraid of change. "Don't fear the Affordable Care Act! Now is the time to talk about it, strategize and be serious about restructuring," she says.

Kellee Terrell is an award-winning Chicago-based freelance writer who writes about race, gender, health and pop culture. Her work has been featured in Essence, The Advocate, The Root, The Huffington Post and The Body.