Department of Health Sciences Faculty Articles

Lost to Care: An Ethical Expansion of the Public Health Uses of State HIV Registries in the United States

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-1-2015

Abstract

Public Health has not applied traditional public health principles and laws to the control of HIV in the United States. Commentators have labeled this phenomenon as HIV exceptionalism. Given new research demonstrating that HIV treatments can also reduce transmission, some have argued that public health should move away from HIV exceptionalism. This paper describes how exceptionalism has restricted the use of HIV registries primarily to epidemiological monitoring, examines models that have expanded use, and provides an ethical analysis. There is a sound ethical basis to loosen legal restrictions on the public health uses of HIV registries to identify individuals who may be at risk of falling out of care, who are out of care, or who are non-adherent to treatment in order to intervene at the individual level. Slippery slope cautions are also addressed.

DOI

10.5580/IJPH.31209

Disciplines

Medicine and Health Sciences

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