The first goal of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) is to “reduce new infections.” In order to monitor progress toward this goal, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Office of National AIDS Policy will be looking at three chosen “indicators” leading up to 2020:
- Increase the percentage of people living with HIV who know their serostatus to at least 90 percent.
- Reduce the number of new diagnoses by at least 25 percent.
- Reduce the percentage of young gay and bisexual men who have engaged in HIV-risk behaviors by at least 10 percent.
Some national HIV prevention advocates question if these are the right national indicators to monitor progress on reducing new infections. In 2015, the CDC and Office of National AIDS Policy changed the way in which we monitor progress toward this goal by switching from incidence estimates to using new diagnoses. Are diagnoses really measuring the number of people being infected each year? Should changing sexual behavior still be a primary indicator in NHAS? Where is PrEP? What about more structural indicators?
Join Treatment Action Group and HIV PJA for an online discussion about other possibilities for monitoring progress and what community advocates and other key stakeholders need to know about how we measure success in our national HIV prevention efforts.
Panelists include:
- Keri N Althoff, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
- Denis Nash, PhD, MPH, City University of New York (CUNY); Executive Director, CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH); Professor of Epidemiology, CUNY School of Public Health
- Stefan Baral, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health