Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Apr 25, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 24, 2021 - May 8, 2021
Date Accepted: Aug 2, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Provider-initiated HIV testing in Puerto Rico: Data from NHBS-HET cycle 2016
ABSTRACT
Background:
According to CDC and WHO guidelines, all individuals from 13 to 64 years of age should get screened for HIV infection as part of their routine medical examinations, and individuals at high risk should get tested annually.
Objective:
This study aimed to identify sociodemographic, healthcare, and sexual behavior predictors of provider-initiated HIV testing (PIHT) using data from the Puerto Rico National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (PR-NHBS) 2016 cycle; directed towards heterosexuals at increased risk of HIV infection (HET).
Methods:
A total sample of 531 eligible participants were recruited through respondent-driven sampling (RDS), where sociodemographic characteristics, healthcare utilization, and HIV testing were assessed.
Results:
Despite 72% showed high-risk sexual behavioral practices and 65.2% of the HET sample interviewed reported a low perceived risk of HIV infection, only 19% reported not receiving an HIV test offered at a recent medical visit. Multivariate analysis shows that HET who engaged in high-risk sexual behaviors (AOR = 0.52; 95% CI: 0.30–0.90) were less likely to receive HIV-test offers from their providers.
Conclusions:
This study further emphasizes the need for healthcare providers to follow recommended guidelines for HIV testing in healthcare settings as a means of establishing preventive measures to further counteract the HIV epidemic in Puerto Rico, specifically among HET.
Citation
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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.