Jul 08, 2005  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

A two-year project in seven cities funded by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention urges people living with HIV to convince their peers to get tested as an attempt to increase testing among those at high risk for contracting the disease.

People recruited for HIV testing through the CDC’s social network project were five times more likely to be infected than people who are tested in traditional settings such as public health clinics, according to the federal health agency. First-year results from the project were published June 24 in the CDC’s Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report.

The data, released to coincide with National HIV Testing Day on June 27, showed that peer recruitment was particularly helpful in identifying cases of HIV among transgendered individuals, along with gay and bisexual men.

“In the project, what was very interesting was that transgender and [gay and bisexual male] recruiters had smaller networks — about two to three people, on average — but we have found they were very good at identifying those in their social networks who had undiagnosed HIV,” said Lisa Kimbrough, a public health adviser and project officer in the prevention research branch of the CDC Division of HIV, STD & TB Prevention.

Kimbrough directed the social network project.

The project involves nine community-based organizations in Boston; Lafayette, La.; New York; Orlando; Philadelphia; San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The agencies enlist people with HIV, along with a handful of uninfected participants at high-risk for HIV, and train them to discuss sexual risk behaviors and HIV testing with members of their social circles.

Preliminary results from the project’s first year revealed that a group of 133 recruiters convinced 814 of their at-risk peers to undergo HIV testing. Some 46 of the 814 people tested were HIV-positive, giving the group an HIV prevalence rate of 6 percent.

That rate is five times higher than the 1 percent HIV prevalence among people who undergo HIV testing at publicly funded testing sites, Kimbrough said.

Risk groups
Gay and bisexual men who also use injection drugs had an HIV prevalence of 26 percent, the highest rate of any group in the project.

Transgendered people had the second highest HIV prevalence rate with 20 percent, followed by men who have sex with men with a 16 percent HIV rate.

Unlike programs that focus on notifying and testing only the sexual partners of people with HIV, the social network project encourages recruiters to take prevention and testing messages from their kitchen tables to heroine shooting galleries, Kimbrough said.

The social network project is part of the CDC’s Prevention for Positives initiative, which shifted HIV prevention efforts in 2003 to focus on preventing HIV-positive people from infecting others.

Prevention programs are most successful when they involve peer-related methods, said Pat Kelly, director of health, education and prevention at the National AIDS Education & Services for Minorities.

But Kelly said he fears the CDC will continue cutting the budget for more traditional forms of outreach, including condom distribution at gay bars, clubs and parks.

“Since it’s peer pressure that often leads you to do wrong, you can probably say that it’s peer pressure that can help you get out of it, or stay away from trouble altogether,” Kelly said. “But to think that these projects are going to replace the core outreach that has taken place — it’s not going to work.”

Increased testing for HIV is crucial as a second wave of HIV infections plagues gay and bisexual men, especially those who are African American, said Armando Hernandez, publications and social marketing manager for the National Association of People With AIDS, the Maryland-based group that created National HIV Testing Day more than a decade ago.

“Early detection — we still know that’s one of the biggest tools we have against fighting HIV,” Hernandez said. “We also need to make sure whenever someone has access to testing, they should also have access to treatment.”