PrEP awareness, referrals low among Hispanic, Latino people
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Only around a quarter of Hispanic/Latino people receiving a CDC-funded HIV test were aware of PrEP, and an even smaller proportion of those eligible for the HIV prevention medication were referred to a PrEP provider, a study found.
HIV PrEP has been approved in the United States since 2012, but uptake — although increasing — has fallen short of goals.
Shubha Rao, MPH, and colleagues in the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention used 2019 testing data from a CDC-funded national HIV prevention program to measure PrEP awareness and referrals among Hispanic/Latino patients at 60 state, local and territorial health departments, and 29 directly funded community-based organizations.
During that year, 2,341,342 CDC-funded HIV tests were conducted in the U.S. Of these, 546,337 (23.3%) were taken by Hispanic/Latino patients, 919,066 (39.3%) by Black patients, and 658,496 (28.1%) by white patients.
Among all those with PrEP-related data, PrEP awareness was slightly higher among Hispanic/Latino people (27.4%) than Black people (26.2%; prevalence rate = 1.05; 95% CI, 1.04-1.06), but lower compared with white people (31.4%; PR = 0.87; 95% CI, 0.87-0.88).
Hispanic/Latino people were more likely to be referred to a PrEP provider (22%) compared with Black people (20.8%; PR = 1.06; 95% CI, 1.04-1.07) but less likely compared with white people (25.9%; PR = 0.85; 95% CI, 0.84-0.86).
“PrEP use is increasing among Hispanic/Latino populations in the United States; however, low levels of PrEP awareness and referrals to PrEP providers among Hispanic/Latino persons in general and compared with non-Hispanic white persons suggest a need to identify and remove barriers to awareness of, referral to, and receipt of PrEP services,” the authors wrote.
References:
CDC. HIV. PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis). https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/prep.html. Accessed Oct. 7, 2021.
Rao S, et al. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2021;doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm7040a1.
Perspective
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This study confirms what we suspected from the epidemiology of incident HIV in the United States — namely, that Hispanic/Latino persons are disproportionately affected, not only by relatively low levels of awareness of PrEP, but that referral to PrEP from care providers is disappointingly low. We must do better, or we will never address the disparities in HIV incidence in this community.
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