ONAP Commissions Institute of Medicine to Examine HIV Testing
and Care Policies According to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), over 56,000 Americans become infected with
HIV each year. A lot needs to be done to halt the HIV epidemic
in the U.S. and, thankfully, we have effective tools at our
disposal. Chief among these tools is HIV testing. CDC estimates
that 21% of people living with HIV are unaware of their HIV
status. You might ask how this is related to stopping the HIV
epidemic. Well, many studies have found that HIV-positive
individuals who know that they are HIV-positive change their
behavior to reduce the chance of transmitting the virus to their
HIV-negative partners. People who are infected with HIV but
don’t know it are at high risk of unintentionally placing HIV-
negative partners at risk for HIV infection. The result is that
a greater number of new HIV transmissions in the U.S. each year
stem from people who do not know that they are HIV-positive. If
we scale up HIV testing, th