CDC ramps up HIV behavioral surveillance
Data collection begins this summer in 15 cities
Ask public health officials what behaviors are driving the recent syphilis epidemics, and their answers are limited at best. That may change in the next year as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) implements behavioral surveillance systems in 15 cities across the country.
"We don’t have a good surveillance system in place to know what have been the trends in common over time," says Matthew McKenna, MD, director of the CDC’s HIV Incidence and Case Surveillance Branch. "Nor do we have a good system that allows us to tie together whether persons are being influenced by prevention programs."
Although the CDC has supported various data collection efforts on behavior, including surveys at HIV testing sites, the scope was limited and didn’t provide ongoing data. This new initiative, which received $5.8 million in federal funds this year, will focus on setting up sustainable systems with standardized methods of sampling. The strategy includes developing formative research with community groups, identifying community members who can develop sampling frames, such as venue-based and "snowball" sampling, and developing standardized questionnaires.
"We plan to be in these areas for years to come," McKenna says.
Six of the 15 sites have been conducting the Serological Testing Algorithm for Recent HIV Seroconversion research, as well, and those studies have found high rates of new HIV infections among young men who have sex with men (MSM). The CDC plans to repeat the methodology of those studies and try to better identify the behaviors responsible for infections.
The first year of the project will focus on injection drug users and MSM, and then expand to high-risk heterosexual populations.
Better behavioral surveillance is critical to making best use of prevention resources, he says. Data from the sites, for example, would help public health officials get a handle on which behaviors are responsible for syphilis outbreaks and whether they are also responsible for increasing rates of HIV transmission.
Public health officials welcome the added investment in behavioral surveillance but question whether more can’t be done with existing HIV prevention programs. One public health advisor suggested that HIV programs could sample HIV cases and collect behavioral data in face-to-face interviews similar to what is done with syphilis programs.
Ask public health officials what behaviors are driving the recent syphilis epidemics, and their answers are limited at best. That may change in the next year as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) implements behavioral surveillance systems in 15 cities across the country.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content