JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

About 46% of U.S. adults obtain recommended HIV screening at least once during one’s lifetime. There is little knowledge of testing rates among deaf and hard-of-hearing adults who primarily use American Sign Language (ASL), or of social media as a potentially efficacious route for HIV prevention outreach, despite lower HIV/AIDS-specific health literacy and potentially higher HIV seropositivity rates than hearing peers.

Objective:

We investigated the likelihood of HIV screening uptake among deaf adults in the past year and over one year ago, and the relationship between social media use and HIV screening uptake among deaf adult ASL users.

Methods:

The Health Information National Trends in ASL (HINTS-ASL) was administered to 1340 deaf U.S. adults between 2015- 2018. The relationship between HIV screening and social media use was evaluated using multinomial regression.

Results:

The estimated lifetime prevalence of HIV screening uptake among our sample is 54%, with 32% in the past year. Being younger age, male, Black, LGBTQ, or having some college education or a prior STD were associated with HIV screening uptake. Adjusting for correlates, social media use was significantly associated with HIV testing in the past year, compared to either lifetime or never.

Conclusions:

Despite higher screening rates in our sample, screening falls well short of universal, with gaps among heterosexual, female, White, or older deaf adults. HIV testing outreach may not be effective because of technological or linguistic inaccessibility, rendering ASL users an underrecognized minority group. Social media remains a powerful tool particularly among younger deaf adults.