Karen Rheuban, MD (lt)and Katharine Wibberly, PhD
The UVA Karen S. Rheuban Center for Telehealth was awarded $5.118 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to serve as the lead on a multi-stakeholder consortium that includes UVA Health, UVA Wise, the Southwest Virginia Health Authority, Ballad Health, the Health Wagon, and Tri Area Community Health. The principal investigator for this grant is Karen S. Rheuban, MD, a professor of pediatrics and co-founder and director of the UVA Center for Telehealth. The co-principal investigator is Katharine Wibberly, PhD, a research assistant professor of public health sciences and director of the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center (MATRC) housed within the University of Virginia Karen S. Rheuban Center for Telehealth.
The funds will be used to:
- Improve access to care provided by UVA Health and Ballad Health via telemedicine in partnership with community providers
- Provide telemedicine equipment for regional hospitals and clinics
- Expand remote patient monitoring services for patients in the region by both UVA and Ballad Health
- Support a UVA virtual Long COVID clinic (led by Dr. Kyle Enfield) and provide funds for an APP for his Long COVID clinic
- Support Project ECHO programming on Long COVID, Hepatitis C, Behavioral Health, and other conditions as identified by regional data
- Support an update of the Healthy Appalachia Institute’s 2016 Blueprint for Health and Health Related Prosperity previously produced by UVA Wise and the Southwest Virginia Health Authority