By David Tuller, DrPH
Investigative journalist Betsy Ladyzhets is a co-founder of The Sick Times, a new online publication covering long Covid and related disorders. Last week, she wrote about a new grant program for long Covid clinics from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Here’s the top of the story:
“This fall, the federal government announced a new grant program to support Long Covid care: the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) awarded million-dollar grants to nine clinics across the country, designed to help these centers extend their reach and develop best practices for addressing this complex chronic disease. Each clinic can receive up to $5 million . over five years, with $45 million set aside for the overall program.
“This grant program builds upon the successes of existing clinics that have been caring for people with Long Covid over the last four years. AHRQ specifically sought to support multidisciplinary clinics, or centers that bring together different medical specialists to examine and treat patients’ complex symptoms across multiple organ systems. Past reporting by both me and my co-editor Miles Griffis has found that multidisciplinary clinics can be helpful for some people with Long Covid, but even the most comprehensive clinics may provide poor guidance if they are not informed by the latest research.”
Betsy and I spoke recently about these grants.
The problem I have with the term Multidisciplinary teams is its been used to refer to Psychologist led Physiotherapist teams for decades in ME/CFS and in Long Covid clinics and its got significant negative connotations as a result. They need another term to distinguish what they are doing from that historical context.
Where are OUR clinics? ME/CFS for 34 years – no network of doctors and clinics to take care of us, and those with other post-viral illnesses.