Early View of an Article from The Milbank Quarterly

The Milbank Memorial Fund is pleased to announce the early online publication of an article from the forthcoming issue of The Milbank Quarterly: “Shifting the Paradigm: Using HIV Surveillance Data as a Foundation for Improving HIV Care and Preventing HIV Infection” by Patricia Sweeney and colleagues. The authors, most of whom are with the HIV-AIDS prevention program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), discuss how ethical and policy considerations regarding the use of HIV surveillance data are being changed by progress in the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Health care providers and laboratories have long been required to report positive HIV test results for public health surveillance purposes, but the uses of that information have been quite limited for privacy reasons and concerns about reducing people’s willingness to be tested. However, many people who test positive are not getting treatment. Surveillance data could be linked with treatment data to identify and facilitate contact with such people to encourage them to enter treatment. The “paradigm shift” of the article’s title is the move from using HIV-status information only for traditional public health surveillance purposes (i.e., to track the spread of the disease) to using it to improve the care of HIV-infected individuals. To access the article, please click here.