October 20, 2011

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently published online several resources for HIV prevention partners. We hope that you find these resources helpful and appreciate your continued HIV prevention efforts.

High-Impact Prevention Brochure

By CDC’s latest estimates, approximately 50,000 Americans become infected with HIV annually, and 16,000 people with AIDS died in 2008. As a result, the number of people living with HIV in the United States, now at nearly 1.2 million, continues to grow by tens of thousands each year, creating more opportunities for HIV transmission. A range of social, economic, and demographic factors affect Americans’ risk for HIV. While current prevention efforts have helped to keep the number of new infections stable in recent years, continued growth in the population living with HIV will ultimately lead to more new infections if prevention, care, and treatment efforts are not intensified.

To address these challenges, CDC and its partners are pursuing a High-Impact Prevention approach to reducing new HIV infections. High-Impact Prevention efforts use combinations of scientifically proven, cost-effective, and scalable interventions targeted to the right populations in the right geographic areas, and focus on maximizing overall reductions in new HIV infections and increasing health equity. This approach promises to increase the impact of HIV prevention efforts – an essential step in achieving the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy. This approach is designed to maximize the impact of prevention efforts for all Americans at risk for HIV infection, including gay and bisexual men, communities of color, women, injection drug users, transgender women and men, youth, and older persons.

CDC has published for partners a brochure on High Impact Prevention. This brochure is available online at: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/strategy/dhap/pdf/nhas_booklet.pdf

HIV among Transgender People

Transgender communities in the United States (US) are among the groups at highest risk for HIV infection. CDC recently announced the availability of an updated fact sheet titled HIV among Transgender People. This fact sheet provides information and statistics on diagnoses of HIV infection and AIDS in transgender people. Prevention challenges and CDC programs that focus on transgender people living with HIV/AIDS and transgender people at risk for HIV infection are also detailed.

You may access the fact sheet online at: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/transgender/index.htm

Serosorting among Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men

CDC has issued a statement on serosorting. Serosorting is a practice some gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) use in an effort to reduce their HIV risk. This means they try to limit unprotected anal sex to partners with the same HIV status as their own. CDC does not recommend serosorting as a safer sex practice because (1) many MSM who have HIV do not know they are infected because they have not been tested for HIV recently, (2) men's assumptions about the HIV status of their partners may be wrong, and (3) some HIV-positive men may not tell or may misrepresent their HIV status. All of these factors increase the risk that serosorting could lead to HIV infection.

CDC's full-text statement on serosorting can be found online at: http://www.cdc.gov/msmhealth/Serosorting.htm

Additional information on serosorting can be found in a recent document published by the World Health Organization at: http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/guidelines/msm_guidelines2011/en/

COMING SOON

CDC will soon release an atlas designed to provide interactive and unified access to HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB data that can meet the analytical and data dissemination needs of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP) and its national, state, and local partners, as well as the general public. The primary intended audience for these data are state and local health departments, community based organizations and other domestic partners that are directly or indirectly funded by NCHHSTP.  This online atlas will contain interactive maps, tables and pie charts that will allow the user to map, display, and analyze NCHHSTP data. The atlas will also have the ability to show data trends, using a trend data player. This first version of the atlas will contain HIV and STD surveillance data, but subsequent versions will contain TB and Viral Hepatitis data, as well as an advanced query component and a dashboard application. Look for more information from CDC on the NCHHSTP Atlas in the coming month.

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