Scientific advances have made possible the development of clinical interventions that significantly lower the transmission of the HIV virus. These interventions, better known as biomedical HIV prevention, consist of powerful methods that reduce HIV transmission, moving us along a path to ending the HIV epidemic. There are three primary biomedical HIV prevention tools so far: Treatment as Prevention (TasP), Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP). A new brief from the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) focuses on exploring TasP and PrEP. This report is the second installment of a two-part report: Blueprint for HIV Biomedical Prevention.
In order to scale up access to biomedical HIV prevention, critical roles and actions by community-based organizations, healthcare providers, and the broader health system are necessary. This is an essential base upon which to build tailored initiatives to meet specific needs of individual communities or subpopulations. Biomedical HIV prevention creates new opportunities to reduce the alarming HIV health inequities that exist across the country. But simply expanding access to treatment and prevention services without understanding the unique needs, values, and barriers to care of specific groups will cause us to expand rather than shrink these alarming disparities. In seeing the uptake, evolution, and expansion of biomedical interventions, several trends have emerged and important lessons have been learned. This report features some key cross-cultural findings that can speak to universal truths and address needs of all communities and important background that can help to develop initiatives that are more effective at meeting the needs of specific communities of color. This report is the compilation of the intelligence and experience of front line strategists serving communities of color in this still evolving field of biomedical HIV prevention.
