Community-based HIV prevention can boost testing, help reduce new infections

Communities in Africa and Thailand that worked together on HIV-prevention efforts saw not only a rise in HIV screening but a drop in new infections, according to a new study in the peer-reviewed journal The Lancet Global Health.   The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health's Project Accept — a trial conducted by the HIV Prevention Trials Network to test a combination of social, behavioral and structural HIV-prevention interventions — demonstrated that a series of community efforts boosted the number of people tested for HIV and resulted in a 14 percent reduction in new HIV infections, compared with control communities.   Much of the research was conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, which has particularly high rates of HIV. The researchers were interested not just in how the clinical trial participants' behavior changed, but also in how these efforts affected the community as a whole, said Thomas Coates, Project Accept's overall principal investigator and director of UCLA's Center for World Health.   "The study clearly demonstrates that high rates of testing can be achieved by going into communities and that this strategy can result in increased HIV detection, which makes referral to care possible," said Coates, who also is an associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute. "This has major public health benefit implications — not only suggesting how to link infected individuals to care, but also encouraging testing in entire communities and therefore also reducing furt...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news