promoting health for AYA males

CDC and Kaiser Foundation release distressing reports on HIV and gay men

September 25, 2013

 
 

Today the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation released reports on HIV/AIDS among gay men. Although Saturday is National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day the news in these two reports is dispiriting. The first report, published in today's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, Men Living with Diagnosed HIV Who Have Sex with Men: Progress Along the Continuum of HIV Care - United States, 2010 found that, Although men who have sex with men (MSM) constitute only 2% of the population, in 2010 63% of new HIV infections were among MSM.

 

"It's unacceptable that treatment, one of our most powerful tools for protecting people's health and preventing new HIV infections, is reaching only a fraction of gay men who need it," said Jonathan Mermin, M.D., director of CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention in a statement. "A top prevention priority at CDC is making sure every gay man with HIV knows his status and receives ongoing medical care - otherwise, we will never tackle the HIV epidemic in the country."
 
 

Key findings from the Kaiser report, HIV/AIDS In The Lives Of Gay And Bisexual Men In The United States, were that fewer than half of gay and bisexual men surveyed in the KFF poll were aware that antiretroviral treatment should begin immediately after an HIV diagnosis, and one quarter knew that treatment can reduce the risk of passing their infections along to a partner. Just 26 percent knew aboutPrEP, a daily pill for HIV-negative individuals that can lower their risk of becoming infected.

 

"It is surprising to a lot of us who spend a lot of time thinking of these issues and live in places where they're talked about a lot," says Liz Hamel, lead author of the KFF poll. "But this survey is nationwide and doesn't necessarily reflect what gay men in activist circles in San Francisco are hearing and talking about."
 

A Kaiser news release on both reports can be found here. A Wall Street Journal blog piece on this subject by Kaiser President Drew Altman can be found here.

 

"The disturbing nature of these two reports underscores the need to reach adolescent and young adult men who have sex with men with information and knowledge about their risks for acquiring HIV," said Dennis Barbour, executive director of The Partnership for Male Youth. "We need to ensure that these young men have greater interaction with health care providers if we are to arrest and reverse the current course of HIV infection among MSM."

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The Partnership for Male Youth has emerged from the health related work of The Boys Initiative, a young nonprofit organization. In late 2012 the Initiative began researching the state of health care for adolescent and young adult (AYA) males, with an eye toward developing solutions to improve their health.  After an extensive literature search and discussions with over 100 individuals from a range of medical disciplines, and under the guidance of a multidisciplinary medical advisory board, the Initiative developed a groundbreaking resource for health care providers that the Partnership released in January 2014: the Health Provider Toolkit for Adolescent and Young Adult Males.   
Dennis J. Barbour, Esq.
Executive Director
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