Junghwan Kim joins $10 million NIH project to improve access to HIV and substance use care
The Virginia Tech geographer will help develop geospatial data-driven tools to identify service gaps and guide mobile care for people affected by HIV and substance use.
Jungwhan Kim. Photo by Chris Moody for Virginia Tech.
Virginia Tech geographer Junghwan Kim will contribute geospatial and transportation expertise to a five-year, $10.2 million National Institutes of Health project aimed at improving access to HIV prevention, treatment, and substance use disorder services in Connecticut.
Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and the director of Smart Cities for Good, will serve as a site principal investigator for the project. Virginia Tech will receive about $450,000 through a subaward from Yale University.
Funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, the project is called GEO IMPACT, short for “Geo-Targeted Implementation of a Novel Mobile Pharmacy and Clinic Healthcare Delivery Model with Community Health Workers for Prevention, Care, and Treatment of HIV and Substance Use.”
The initiative is led by researchers at Yale University in collaboration with Virginia Tech, Stanford University, Wake Forest University, Connecticut agencies, and community partners.
“This project is especially important for me because it addresses a critical public health crisis in the United States,” Kim said. “At the same time, it shows how geography and geospatial analysis can be applied in the public health domain. It’s multidisciplinary work, and that’s what matters to me.”
The research team will develop statistical and geographic models to determine where people living with or at risk for HIV and substance use disorders have the greatest need for services. Researchers will also identify gaps in access to pharmacies, opioid treatment programs, HIV services, and other health care resources.
The resulting information will help the team decide where to deploy mobile pharmacy and clinic services. The mobile units will be able to bring health care, medications, testing, treatment, and connections to social services directly to communities with limited access to existing facilities.
Kim will examine how transportation affects a person’s ability to reach and remain engaged with treatment. His work will consider factors such as travel time, public transportation availability, transfers, waiting times, and the distance between patients’ homes and health care providers.
A trip requiring multiple bus transfers or hours of travel can create a significant barrier for patients who need to visit a treatment provider regularly, Kim said. He will combine geospatial transportation analysis with information gathered through interviews and surveys to better understand patients’ experiences and travel burdens.
By the end of the project, the researchers aim to produce a decision-making framework that health care providers and public agencies can use to determine where mobile clinics should operate, where permanent services may be needed, and how existing resources can be made more accessible.
The project builds on Kim’s previous research with Yale collaborators examining transportation access to opioid treatment programs in Connecticut. His broader research focuses on human mobility, health care accessibility, environmental health, and the application of AI-powered geospatial data science to societal challenges.
