April 10 is National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness about the impact of HIV among youth and adolescents. This annual observance offers an opportunity to highlight the importance of promoting HIV prevention, treatment, and care among youth and adolescents in the U.S.
The U.S. National HIV/AIDS Strategy 2022-25 emphasizes a critical need to improve HIV outcomes among youth. The Strategy summarizes key issues and considerations related to youth, noting that:
Youth experience worse HIV outcomes on status awareness, pre-exposure prophylaxis uptake, and health outcomes. Children and young adults with HIV need tailored and often more intensive medical and support services to support them as they grow and become young adults. Schools play an important role in the primary prevention of HIV in youth by offering comprehensive sexual health education and on-site sexual health services through school-based health centers and school nurses, or in collaboration with community partners that provide services, such as periodic, school-wide HIV and STI screening events or mobile clinics. Schools that cannot provide direct sexual health services can establish integrated referral systems that link students to youth-friendly providers in the community. There is a need for both primary prevention approaches and HIV care models that are tailored to groups of youth at disproportionate risk of HIV, including young gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men and people who inject drugs (p. 54).
Several CHIPTS faculty have pursued research to better understand the contextual factors contributing to HIV infection and test strategies to improve HIV outcomes among youth. Recent publications reflecting this work include:
- Tang, W., Gunn, H. J., Kwok, S., Comulada, W. S., Arnold, E. M., Swendeman, D., Fernández, M. I., & ATN masthead University of California, Los Angeles (2022). Response Patterns to Weekly Short Message Service Health Surveys Among Diverse Youth at High Risk for Acquiring HIV.
- Vargas, N., Clark, J. L., Estrada, I. A., De La Torre, C., Yosha, N., Magaña Alvarez, M., Parker, R. G., & Garcia, J. (2022). Critical Consciousness for Connectivity: Decoding Social Isolation Experienced by Latinx and LGBTQ+ Youth Using a Multi-Stakeholder Approach to Health Equity.
- Fee, C., Fuller, J., Guss, C. E., Woods, E. R., Cooper, E. R., Bhaumik, U., Graham, Swendeman, D. (2022). A Digital Platform to Support HIV Case Management for Youth and Young Adults: Mixed Methods Feasibility Study.
In addition to these publications, we invite you to check out our EHE Regional Learning Collaborative session on Strategies to Engage and Serve Youth. This session highlighted effective strategies being implemented by different California organizations to help address HIV among youth. Presenters emphasized the importance of linkage to services (e.g. HIV testing, PrEP), including family members in care (e.g., counseling, care management), and establishing healthy behavior patterns (e.g., peer to peer groups, interacting with other HIV+ youth).
Learn more about how the HIV epidemic is impacting U.S. youth and available tools:
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- The White House. 2021. National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States 2022–2025. Washington, DC.
- CDC. Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance—United States, 2019. MMWR Suppl 2020;69(1):1-83.
- HIV Care Innovations: Replication Resources: https://targethiv.org/library/hiv-care-innovations-replication-resources
- HRSA HAB Building Futures: Supporting Youth Living with HIV: https://targethiv.org/library/hrsa-hab-building-futures-supporting-youth-living-hiv