Eliminate Hepatitis C/EC Partnership Evaluation Protocol

The Eliminate Hepatitis C (EC) Partnership project is a multi-site, multi-year project aiming to enhance and extend hepatitis C virus (HCV) care and treatment among people who inject drugs (PWID) through nurse-led models of care in the community and the prison system. The project will implement and evaluate a health service intervention to enhance HCV response by improving health promotion, offering training and education to service providers, streamlining clinical pathways, utilising data systems and surveillance and implementing the results of ongoing research and evaluation. Health services data will be used to assess the impact of the EC nurse-led support, to enhance the clinical pathway and increase HCV testing, linkage to care and treatment uptake in community and prison settings. This will include provider and client interviews and a sentinel surveillance system (ACCESS) that will track and monitor impact indicators including HCV testing, linkage to care and treatment uptake at the service and population level. Overall, evaluation data will be used to monitor the uptake of HCV treatment in PWID, monitor the effectiveness of community- and prison-based treatment program and assess the cost and feasibility of treating \>1160 PWID in community-/prison-based program and assess changes in HCV prevalence in Victoria and modelling the impact of treating PWID to inform HCV elimination models in Australia and globally.