Margaret Tonelli

Teens and HIV

Though the number of new HIV infections has peaked in the United States, our work is far from done. HIV/AIDS is a preventable disease and it is imperative to continue to educate each new generation of young people on healthy lifestyles and healthy sexual behaviors. HIV continues to disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities. African Americans have the highest rates of HIV/AIDS of all ethnic and racial groups and they account for the majority of perinatal infections. Of new HIV diagnoses (2001e2005), 61% were black youth age 16e24. Today, women in the United States are most likely to be infected with HIV through heterosexual sex. In 2005 African American women had 20 times the rate of infection of white women. It is important to understand that race and ethnicity are not risk factors, but the socioeconomic factors affecting minorities, such as poverty and/or limited access to health care have a greater impact on the health of minorities and their rate of HIV infections. The Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) 2003 Advancing HIV Prevention (AHP) initiative identified four strategies for HIV prevention: making HIV testing a routine part of medical care; implementing new models for diagnosing HIV infections outside medical settings; preventing new infections by working with HIV-infected persons and their partners; and further decreasing perinatal HIV transmission. More than half of the CDC’s domestic HIV prevention budget is funding efforts in African American communities to increase HIV knowledge, reduce the stigma of testing, and increase outreach to bisexually active men. The CDC now recommends routine HIV testing for all adults and adolescents in health care settings. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the CDC recommend that prenatal screening (opt out testing) for HIV be included in routine blood testing unless a pregnant woman declines testing, and also voluntary rapid testing in labor for women without documented HIV status. These are national recommendations but providers need to be