During his 2019 State of the Union Address to the United States Congress, President Trump introduced an ambitious plan for America: eradicating the HIV epidemic by 2030. After the President’s address, his Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Aza, published a blog post about the Department’s approach to end the HIV epidemic, which supports President Trump’s message in the State of the Union Address. Secretary Aza explains that the plan focuses on three major areas:
(1) increase funding towards affected regions and existing HIV treatment programs
(2) using empirical data to guide local policymaking on HIV prevention, care, and treatment
(3) providing funds towards a new “HIV HealthForce” in areas with the highest risk of new HIV transmission to expand prevention and treatment.
Image Source: Chip Somodevilla
With these points in mind, the Department of HHS aims to diagnose, treat, protect, and respond to risks of new HIV infections and implement these practices across the US in 10 years. However, the HIV epidemic is much more complex than simply increasing funding towards prevention and treatment programs. Therefore, it is important to address the incidence of HIV among marginalized communities in the United States that are among the hardest hit by this epidemic such as the LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/transsexual, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexuality, and others) community. Highlighting these impacted populations will broaden the scope of the epidemic and reveal the complex obstacles on the road to 2030.
Within the LGBTQIA+ Community, gay and bisexual men account for only 4% of the US male population, yet they account for more than half of the 1.1 million diagnosed and undiagnosed individuals with HIV. In a recent 2016 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, the study found that the highest percentage of HIV transmission was attributed to male-to-male sexual contact. However, even within the gay and bisexual community, there appears to be disproportional levels of HIV incidence along racial demographic lines.
“Gay and bisexual men account for only 4% of the US male population, yet they account for more than half of the 1.1 million diagnosed and undiagnosed individuals with HIV.”
While HIV incidence within the gay and bisexual community declined among Caucasians from 2010 to 2016, incidence had stabilized among African Americans and increased among Latinos by 13%. In addition to these figures, annual HIV infections have also increased by 47% among 25 to 47-year-old individuals. Therefore, it is important that equitable funding and resources be made available to these affected communities, especially in pre-dominantly rural regions such as the South, where 46% of the total population affected by HIV reside.
Image Source: David Levingstone
Accounting for the scale of individuals affected by HIV, the US public must continue to hold policymakers and healthcare providers accountable for addressing disparities within these already marginalized communities. While the president’s initiative is ambitious and respectable, the effect of its implementation must be constantly and thoroughly monitored to safeguard the individual humanity behind this disease.
Feature Image Source: gagnonm1993.
