A Burnet staff member screening someone in Kokopo, ENB for tuberculosis, hypertension and diabetes. Image: Thom Cookes

Integrated care for non-communicable diseases, HIV and tuberculosis in Papua New Guinea

We’re investigating a new ‘integrated care’ model in Papua New Guinea that considers non-communicable diseases like diabetes, asthma and heart disease. We’re exploring how well this care model works in primary care clinics.

In Papua New Guinea, we’ve worked with local partners to help test and treat people for communicable diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. This project investigates how those programs can be expanded to consider non-communicable diseases.

Also known as chronic diseases, non-communicable diseases aren't transmitted between people. But they can still lead to poor health. Non-communicable diseases are the leading cause of death in Papua New Guinea.

This project follows recommendations from the World Health Organization on integrating noncommunicable disease care into existing public health programs.

A key aspect of integrated care is including peer counsellors – people with lived experience of chronic diseases who provide emotional, social and practical support to others facing similar health challenges.

We’re investigating how this guidance can be put into practice in a local context, conducting a randomised trial to be able to rigorously compare the new integrated care with current standard care.

The full study title is ‘The HEAL-PNG trial: hybrid effectiveness, feasibility and acceptability for long-term conditions – integrating NCD care in TB and HIV clinics to improve the management of multiple long-term conditions in Papua New Guinea.’

What we're doing

We're working with 15 clinics across the Morobe and East New Britain provinces.

We’re implementing an integrated care model, and investigating whether it can:

increase the numbers of people diagnosed with chronic conditions

keep people engaged in care, reducing drop offs between follow-up appointments.

As part of this, our teams are evaluating the integrated care model based on its:

reach

effectiveness

acceptability

adoption

implementation fidelity

maintenance.

We’re also modelling the cost-effectiveness of the integrated care model. That includes the cost per disability-adjusted life year (DALY) averted. Disability-adjusted life year (DALY) is a way to measure the impact of disease, disability or debility, by measuring the loss of one year of full health.