Month: June 2023

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has announced a new funding opportunity that will support up to three pilot sites to take a syndemic approach to services by integrating behavioral health, HIV, and other services that are delivered outside for unsheltered racial and ethnic minority individuals using a portable clinical care approach. The pilot sites will be required to deliver a core package of services that includes basic primary healthcare; infectious disease prevention, testing, and treatment; substance use disorder (SUD) treatment; mental healthcare; and harm reduction services.

The Integrated Behavioral Health and HIV Care for Unsheltered Populations Pilot Project (Short Title: Portable Clinical Care Pilot Project) is supported with resources from the Minority HIV/AIDS Fund, which is administered by the HHS Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy. SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment will manage the program. Funded projects may last up to three years. In FY2023, $2 million is available to support the pilot sites. Applications are due by July 24, 2023.

To learn more about the NOFO please read the latest HIV.gov Blog/SAMHSA Funding Opportunity for Portable Clinical Care Services for Racial/Ethnic Minorities Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness.

National HIV Testing Day (NHTD) is observed on June 27th each year to emphasize and encourage HIV testing. The theme for 2023, “Take the Test & Take the Next Step” emphasizes that knowing your HIV status helps you choose options to stay healthy. Knowledge of HIV status is the first step to accessing prevention or treatment services that enable individuals to live a long and healthy life regardless of their status. There are many different ways and places that patients can get tested for HIV, including at home with a self-test. Learn more about the benefits of self testing.

CDC Testing Recommendations

The importance of HIV testing is included in the National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States 2022-2025 (PDF 1.76 MB), and one of its objectives, To Increase Knowledge of HIV Status, aligns with NHTD. Further, CDC recommends the following HIV testing:

• Everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 should get tested for HIV at least once as part of routine health care.
• Those with certain ongoing risk factors—such as having more than one sex partner since their last HIV test or having sex with someone whose sexual history they don’t know—should get tested annually. Some sexually active gay and bisexual men may benefit from more frequent testing (e.g., every 3 to 6 months).
• As part of proactive prenatal care, all pregnant women should receive certain blood tests to detect infections and other illnesses, such as HIV, syphilis, and Hepatitis B.

Learn more about the Importance of HIV Testing for Prevention of HIV Infection and HIV Tests for Screening and Diagnosis on the CDC website now.

CDC Testing Basics

CDC Testing Guidelines

HIV Status-Neutral Service Delivery Model

Status-neutral is an evolution and expansion of how HIV service agencies currently implement the HIV care continuum. Status-neutral encompasses the delivery of HIV prevention and care services while addressing the myriad social and health needs of patients regardless of their HIV status. Testing is at the forefront of the status-neutral model. Below is PAETC’s status-neutral model.

Learn more about the status-neutral model from TargetHIV.

Resources from PAETC and our Training Partners

HIV 101 Testing Resources

Webinar

• PAETC HIVLN webinar, HIV Status Disclosure: Considerations to reduce stigma in serodifferent relationships.

Web pages

• CDC rationale for routine HIV screening: Benefits of Routine Screening
• CDC rationale for routine HIV screening: Opt-Out Screening
• CDC types of HIV tests

CAPTC Videos on Delivering Positive Test Results

The California Prevention Training Center has created various video roleplays on delivering positive HIV results.

• Delivering a positive HIV test result to a male patient
• Delivering a positive HIV rest result to a female pregnant patient
• Delivering a positive HIV test result – rapid test in an ER

Cross-posted from HIV.gov

National HIV Testing Day (NHTD) was first observed on June 27, 1995. This is a day to encourage people to get tested for HIV, know their status, and get linked to care and treatment.

The theme for 2023, “Take the Test & Take the Next Step” emphasizes that knowing your HIV status helps you choose options to stay healthy. HIV testing, including self-testing, is the pathway to engaging people in care to keep them healthy, regardless of their test result. People who receive a negative test result can take advantage of HIV prevention tools such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), condoms, and other sexual health services such as vaccines and testing for sexually transmitted infections. People who receive a positive test result can rapidly start HIV treatment (antiretroviral therapy, or ART) to stay healthy. To support this year’s theme, partners can add a tagline to customize as they like. For example:

• Take the Test & Take the Next Step: No matter how you test, no matter your test results, take the next step.
• Take the Test & Take the Next Step:  Check your status and know. Take the steps to be good to go.
• Take the Test & Take the Next Step: Testing – critical to ending the HIV epidemic in the U.S.!

The National HIV/AIDS Strategy and the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. Initiative emphasize diagnosing individuals as soon as possible and ensuring the availability of multiple HIV testing modalities to best meet the needs of populations with increased risk of transmission due to a wide range of social, economic, and demographic factors (such as stigma, discrimination, etc.).

HIV testing is an act of self-care. According to the CDC, encouraging people to get tested and know their HIV status can help them stay healthy. Today, there are more free, easy, fast, and confidential HIV testing options available than ever before. Testing, including self-testing, is the first step to engaging in HIV prevention or treatment services. HIV testing is a critical tool to helping us end the HIV epidemic in the United States.

Watch this Taking the Test is Taking Care of You video to learn more about HIV testing and self-care.

Currently, CDC and many other organizations are distributing free HIV self-testing kits. You can find more information about HIV testing on our HIV Testing Overview page.

Cross-posted from HIV.gov

Content From: B. Kaye Hayes, MPA, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Infectious Disease, Director, Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP), Executive Director, Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA)

Celebrating June as LGBTQI+ Pride Month brings me great joy, as it is a time to recognize the community’s contributions while remembering the challenges faced by so many. Given this reality, I appreciate the powerful reminder from President Biden’s Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, “Your identity is not your weakness; it is your superpower.”

During the past year, strides led by LGBTQI+ advocacy have yielded significant public health achievements. One such achievement is the mobilization of the community to educate and organize around mpox vaccination and our efforts to prevent a resurgence.

Additional achievements include the recently updated FDA blood donor guidance, which overturned longstanding policies that excluded gay and bisexual people from donating blood, and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps’ updated medical standards to accept future applicants with chronic hepatitis B and HIV.

Despite these and other advances, it’s unfortunate that LGBTQI+ communities still face disparate health inequalities. LGBTQI+ people are at an increased risk for adverse health outcomes, such as HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), substance abuse, and mental health-related distress. They are also more likely to lack health insurance, experience health care-related discrimination, and be denied health care by a provider.

Advancing Health Equity for LGBTQI+ Communities

At the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), we are working to ensure full equality for LGBTQI+ people and addressing LGBTQI+ health disparities head-on. This summer, we hope you will join us in sharing resources to advance the health of LGBTQI+ communities. I want to highlight important ways my office, the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS, is working to advance health equity for LGBTQI+ communities.

We coordinate the cross-agency Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. (EHE) initiative. This initiative aims to end the HIV epidemic and highlights four key strategies that, when implemented together, can help us all focus on diagnosing, treating, preventing, and responding to HIV.

We collaborate with LGBTQI+ communities to leverage critical scientific advances and coordinate to support highly successful programs and resources. The success of this initiative depends on partners from all sectors of society working together, including people with HIV or at risk for HIV.

Additional HHS Resources to Use and Share

As part of the EHE initiative, HHS developed the community-informed “I am a Work of ART” national viral suppression campaign and its Spanish-language version, “Celebro mi salud,” which feature creative partners who represent the diversity of the HIV community. The campaign aims to encourage people with HIV who are not in care to seek care, remain in care, and achieve viral suppression by taking antiretroviral therapy (ART).

HIV.gov also features valuable and timely updates to expand the visibility of federal HIV policies, programs, and resources. The website provides information to increase knowledge about HIV and access to HIV services. For example, the HIV.gov Services Locator makes it easier to find nearby HIV services, mpox vaccines, and other services.

The first-ever Sexually Transmitted Infections National Strategic Plan 2021-2025 (PDF, 2.49MB) offers a roadmap to reverse the recent dramatic rise in STIs in the United States, which disproportionately burdens LGBTQI+ subgroups.

As the Summer of Pride and related events continue across the country, I encourage you to use and share these resources and continue celebrating the community’s achievements. Please follow HIV.gov for more information and visit CDC’s Get Healthy and Ready for Summer 2023 resource webpage.

Please also check out two videos from my office’s staff about the significance of Pride within OIDP and why it matters to us as an organization, as well as why our OIDP team is passionate about supporting and celebrating Pride.

Happy Pride!

Cross-posted from HIV.gov

Content From: Office of HIV/AIDS Housing, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of HIV/AIDS Housing, which administers the Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS (HOPWA) program, in collaboration with the Technical Assistance Collaborative, Inc. and Videographer, Josh Hayes, recently released new resources titled, Homecoming: Life after Incarceration. Homecoming focuses on raising awareness of the myriad challenges and barriers people experience as they re-enter society after incarceration.

The resources showcase examples of organizations, subject matter experts, Federal and local officials, advocates, and community members who are leading the way in supporting the reentry population and feature the often-marginalized voices of people with lived experience. Homecoming has a secondary focus on the connection between HIV and incarceration and highlights the challenges and opportunities that exist in addressing the housing and health needs of people with HIV exiting jails and prisons.

• Watch the documentary style video episodes which use the unique capabilities of film to humanize this topic. Each video is 20-40 minutes in length and includes interviews with post-release housing and services clients and providers, as well as researchers and policy makers in the field.
• Explore the toolkit which includes a book with chapters that dive deeply into key topics related to incarceration, housing, and HIV.

Cross-posted from HIV.gov

Twenty community organizations will receive $15,000 each for community-driven innovative solutions to address the needs of people aging with HIV or long-term survivors in rural and urban areas.

These funds are part of the first phase of two challenges worth a total of $1 million that focus on HIV and aging and long-term survivors. The two challenges were organized by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP), and the Administration for Community Living (ACL).

The two challenges are:

• “Innovations for Needs of People Aging with HIV/Long-term Survivors in Urban Communities” Challenge
• “$500,000 Rural HIV and Aging Challenge”

These efforts support innovations that help improve health outcomes for people aging with HIV and long-term survivors, particularly among racial and ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ populations.

Each challenge is split into two phases. The first phase, which is referenced above, awards winners $15,000 each for their design of concept. In the second phase, these winners will begin the development of solutions and small-scale testing of their concepts.

“These community-driven solutions focus on the needs of older adults living with HIV to address their non-biomedical needs, such as nutrition, social isolation, and peer and caregiver support. These solutions can be highly effective in improving their overall health and well-being,” said Kaye Hayes, MPA, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Infectious Disease & Director, OIDP.

The challenges are funded by the Minority HIV/AIDS Fund (MHAF), which aims to improve HIV prevention, care, and treatment for racial and ethnic minorities through supporting innovative solutions that address critical emerging needs. MHAF also works to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and impact of federal investments in HIV programs and services for racial and ethnic minorities. The challenges are also part of actions identified in the National HIV/AIDS Strategy Federal Implementation Plan.

“We offered both a rural and urban challenge seeking effective community-based solutions because different communities often require a different approach,” said Edwin Walker, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Aging, ACL.

Read more and see a map of Challenge Winners on HIV.gov