Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Jul 7, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 30, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Research Priorities to End the Adolescent HIV Epidemic in the United States
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Youth represent 21% of new HIV diagnoses in the United States (US). Gay, bisexual, and transgender youth (GBTY), particularly those from communities of color, and youth who are homeless, incarcerated, in institutional settings, or engaging in transactional sex are most heavily impacted. Compared to adults, youth have lower levels of HIV serostatus awareness, uptake of antiretroviral therapy (ART) and adherence. Widespread availability of ART has revolutionized prevention and treatment for both youth at high risk for HIV acquisition and youth living with HIV (YLH), increasing the need to integrate behavioral interventions with biomedical strategies.
Methods:
The investigators of the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions (ATN) completed a research prioritization process in 2019, focusing on research gaps to be addressed to effectively control HIV spread among American youth. The investigators prioritized research in the following areas: 1) innovative interventions for youth to increase screening, uptake, engagement and retention in HIV prevention and treatment services; 2) structural changes in health systems to facilitate routine delivery of HIV services; 3) biomedical strategies to increase ART impact, prevent HIV transmission, and cure HIV; 4) mobile technologies to reduce implementation costs and increase acceptability of HIV interventions; and 5) data-informed policies to reduce HIV-related disparities and increase support and services for GBTY and YLH.
Conclusions:
The ATN’s research priorities provide a roadmap for addressing the HIV epidemic among youth. To reach this goal, researchers, policy-makers and providers must work together to develop, test and disseminate novel bio-behavioral interventions for youth.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.