Tiffany Walker, MD, and team to receive $5 Million grant from HHS to Expand Access to Care for People with Long COVID

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), announced nine grant awards of $1 million each for up to

5 years to support existing multidisciplinary Long COVID clinics across the country to expand access to comprehensive, coordinated, and person-centered care for people with Long COVID, particularly underserved, rural, vulnerable, and minority populations that are disproportionately impacted by the effects of Long COVID.

Tiffany Walker, MD, Assistant Professor (General Internal Medicine), and the Atlanta Long COVID Collaborative have been awarded one of the nine AHRQ grants, specifically for “Implementing and Evaluating New Models for Delivering Comprehensive, Coordinated, Person-Centered Care to People with Long COVID” (U18). This five-year, $5 million center grant aims to develop a Multi-Health System Long COVID Center of Excellence through Emory and Grady Healthcare Systems. Dr. Walker will serve as the lead PI along with MPIs Jenny Han, MD, MSc and Alex Truong, MD, MPH.  This grant builds on infrastructure established by the Researching COVID-19 to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative, a multisite Long COVID meta cohort that seeks to understand and treat Long COVID, led at the Atlanta Hub by Igho Ofotokun, MD, MSc, Zanthia Wiley, MD, and Priscilla Pemu, MD, MS.

According to the HHS release sent out last week, “These nine grants have strong potential to serve as a roadmap for developing improved care models for primary care and specialty clinics serving populations disproportionately impacted by the effects of Long COVID,” said AHRQ Director Robert Otto Valdez, Ph.D., M.H.S.A. “We look forward to sharing actionable knowledge from AHRQ grantees with other healthcare providers to support high-quality care for vulnerable patients with Long COVID.”

Join us in congratulating Dr. Walker, Dr. Han, and Dr. Truong on this important grant to support their work. For more information about the nine grants awarded earlier this month, please read the HHS announcement HERE.