August 18, 2022 – Amid the pandemic, clinical visits for HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and other evidence-based preventive services in the U.S. declined.
The American Medical Association (AMA) announced a new initiative aimed at addressing this issue by helping physicians and other health care professionals increase routine screenings for HIV, STIs, viral hepatitis and latent tuberculosis (LTBI).
As part of this effort, the AMA, with the support of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), worked to understand key barriers and drivers for implementing routine screening and developed a toolkit to provide best practices and strategies to enhance screening programs. The AMA is collaborating with several community health center sites that will test the quality improvement strategies outlined in the toolkit to determine their impact on routine screening, as well as provide overall feedback on the toolkit before it is disseminated more broadly.
“Routine screening and early detection of HIV, STIs, viral hepatitis, and LTBI are critical to ensure patients receive treatment and also lower their risk of transmitting these infectious diseases to others,” said AMA President Jack Resneck Jr., M.D. “Given that access to preventive services were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals may not even be aware they have an infection and are at risk of contributing to new infections. We know that social inequities and stigma continue to be barriers to screening. We believe this new toolkit will help increase screenings and prevent further spread of these infectious diseases. Additionally, with the monkeypox virus outbreak declared a public health emergency, the overlap in populations disproportionally affected, and the benefits of a syndemic approach, we look forward to the opportunity to work with the clinic sites in addressing this public health threat.”