HIV Fact Sheets

HIV Prevention in the United States:

Expanding the Impact

Expanding the Impact
Today’s Epidemic	Proven Prevention Methods	Progress To Date	Challenges in HIV Prevention	Future of HIV Prevention

HIV Prevention in Action: Partner Success Stories

Fighting HIV Among Heterosexual Women: Access Community Health Network

Figure 2 CLEAR helps participants make healthy choices in all areas of their lives. This photo shows a social marketing poster used in one of the ACCESS prevention programs.

CLEAR helps participants make healthy choices in all areas of their lives
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The Access Community Health Network (ACCESS), Chicago’s largest private provider of primary and preventive health care, uses surveillance data from the Chicago Department of Public Health to identify specific neighborhoods with high rates of HIV infection, particularly among African American women. ACCESS reaches out to women in these communities with customized HIV counseling, testing, and linkage-to-care services using a number of targeted programs supported by CDC, including:

WiLLOW (Women Involved in Life Learning from Other Women), which helps HIV-positive women stay in medical care
CLEAR (Choosing Life: Empowerment! Action! Results!), a program of personalized counseling and care for women at greatest risk for HIV infection
SISTA (Sisters Informing Sisters about Topics on AIDS), which helps HIV-negative women build self-esteem and insist on condom use
CTR (HIV Counseling, Testing & Referral), which works directly with at-risk women to provide prevention information and testing

ACCESS is able to scale up its intensive individual and small-group programs by training instructors to participate in multiple interventions and applying lessons learned in each program to all the others. Program participants also expand the organization’s reach, helping to refer additional women through social networking. These efforts allow ACCESS to deliver proven prevention tools widely – for example, providing HIV testing to nearly 20,000 individuals and distributing more than 60,000 condoms each year.

HIV Testing in Action: Washington, D.C.

Figure 3. Routine voluntary HIV testing is the standard of care in Washington, D.C. This photo shows a social marketing poster used in Washington, D.C.’s HIV testing campaign.

Routine voluntary HIV testing is the standard of care in Washington, D.C.
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Expanded HIV testing is helping Washington, D.C.’s HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD, and TB Administration (HAHSTA) make encouraging progress in the fight against HIV in the nation’s capital. With support from CDC, HAHSTA launched the Municipal Scale-up of HIV Screening program in 2006. This initiative is expanding HIV testing in a variety of health care settings and, increasingly, non-traditional settings, such as Low Income Benefits centers where families apply for economic assistance and the Department of Motor Vehicles, where individuals can obtain an HIV test while waiting for a driver’s license.

HAHSTA encourages residents to seek HIV testing using a range of marketing channels and materials, including print ads, radio spots, billboards, and the DCTakesOnHIV.com website. Since the program began, testing has increased by 400 percent, from fewer than 30,000 tests in 2006 to 122,000 in 2011.

HAHSTA also carefully examined its counseling and testing procedures to help ensure that people testing positive receive the care and treatment they need – and now successfully links three-quarters of people with HIV to care.