Pennsylvania Ryan White All Parts Summit in Harrisburg, PA

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On Wednesday, October 14, 2009, Cyndi Dinger, Director of Nutrition & Client Services represented MANNA at the Pennsylvania Ryan White All Parts Summit in Harrisburg, PA.  This conference was collaboratively organized by the Pennsylvania/MidAtlantic AIDS Education and Training Center, the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health Department of Infectious Diseases & Microbiology, The Pennsylvania Department of Health, and the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare.  

The summit was a day and half long program that brought together HIV/AIDS service providers from across the commonwealth to share best updates and best practices in care for people living with HIV/AIDS.  Cyndi presented an abstract, "Enhancing Services Improves Outcomes," that she and Director of Institutional Giving Ann Hoskins-Brown co-authored describing the many enhancements we have implemented at MANNA over the past fiscal year.

Cyndi’s presentation was chosen as one of the abstracts in the “Quality Management, Continuous Quality Improvement Category”.

After presenting MANNA’s history in providing nutrition services to the HIV/AIDS community since 1990, the evolution of the nutrition program here at MANNA was detailed.  As the medical treatments for HIV/AIDS patients have evolved, so have the Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) services MANNA provides.  Currently, MANNA is the only agency in the Philadelphia area that provides comprehensive nutrition services free of charge including medically appropriate modified meals with MNT.

2009 was a dynamic year here at MANNA and we implemented many changes to our program including: increased to 21 meals per week and adjusting our six week menu to reflect recommendations of the American Heart Association and the American Institute for Cancer Research for all of our diets. We deliver meals once weekly to all clients, including nutrition tip sheets with the weekly food delivery, and nutritional website enhancements.

MANNA has been tracking the impact of the services we provide on six quality of life indicators (QOL) for a few years now. In 2008 prior to all the changes that we implemented, 90% of clients reported at least one improved outcome as a result of receiving the MANNA services. We were very proud of those outcomes at the end of 2008.  However, it was even more exciting to see that throughout 2009 we demonstrated dramatic improvement in our outcomes as a direct result of the increase in quantity of meals and the other service enhancements.  Our QOL indicators showed impressive increases for each of the aspects we track. The results were:

 

• 84.5% of our client increased the number of meals eaten each day (up from 61% in FY 08), 87.3% improved emotional health (up from 68%)
• 79.6% improved energy levels (up from 66%)
• 85.4% reported better understanding the role of diet in health (up from 70%)
• 85.1% on overall health (up from 70%)
• 87.9% report decreased stress (up from 73%)

 

It was a great honor to be able to share our success with other care providers, and to update them on all the great things MANNA has accomplished.