Abstract and Introduction
Abstract
Background: Despite the 2006 US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for routine HIV testing in health care settings, many persons remain untested.
Purpose: To determine physician barriers to HIV testing, we surveyed primary care physicians in community health centers in a high HIV prevalence city.
Methods: Primary care physicians were invited via e-mail to participate in a Web-based survey. One hundred and thirty-seven physicians participated (response rate: 43.9%).
Results: Fifty-five physicians (41.0%) were unaware of updated CDC HIV testing recommendations. Physicians were unaware that testing should be routinely offered in primary care settings caring for adolescents (62 physicians, 45.6%) and primary care settings caring for adults (33, 24.3%). Physicians were also unaware that teenage years patients aged 13 to 17 years (68, 49.6%) and adult patients aged 18 to 64 years (40, 29.2%) should be routinely HIV tested.
Conclusion: With the new 2013 US Preventive Services Task Force recommendations to support routine HIV testing, it is critical to address ongoing physician HIV testing barriers to mitigate the HIV epidemic.
Introduction
In the United States today, there are more than 1.1 million people living with HIV.[1] HIV testing is a vital intervention to curb the ongoing HIV epidemic. When people learn they are HIV positive, they can prevent further spread of HIV in the community by changing their risk behaviors[2] and by beginning antiretroviral therapy, the latter of which is an intervention directly responsible for lowering community viral load.[3] Unfortunately, in the United States, 1 in 6 people do not know their HIV positive status.[1]
Many persons with HIV remain unaware of their infection because physicians are not routinely offering HIV testing. To improve HIV testing, in 2006 the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued recommendations for clinicians to perform routine, opt-out HIV testing of all patients aged 13 to 64 years.[4] Many professional medical societies subsequently released policy statements in support of the CDC's recommendations.[5–8] Despite CDC and professional medical society recommendations, a 2012 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 36% of adults had not been tested for HIV because their doctor had never recommended testing.[9] Studies to date have found that many physicians are not routinely offering HIV tests as advised by the 2006 CDC HIV testing guidelines.[10–15] The objective of this study was to assess primary care physician awareness and knowledge of the 2006 CDC HIV testing recommendations.
J Int Assoc Provid AIDS Care. 2014;13(4):296-299. © 2014 Sage Publications, Inc.
