National HIV Testing Day – JUNE 27

With National HIV Testing Day (NHTD) approaching on June 27, our partners at the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion(ODPHP) are putting the spotlight on HIV status awareness with an upcoming webinar and some new tools for community and public health partners. ODPHP, also located within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, plays a vital role in developing and coordinating a wide range of national disease prevention and health promotion activities.

Starting in January 2012, ODPHP has hosted a monthly webinar to spotlight one or more of the Healthy People 2020 Leading Health Indicators (LHIs)– a smaller set of Healthy People 2020 objectives selected to communicate high-priority health issues to key stakeholders and outline various actions that can be taken to address them. The June Who’s Leading the Leading Health Indicators? webinar will focus on the Reproductive and Sexual Health indicators, which include the following HIV indicator: persons living with HIV who know their serostatus. The indicator sets a target of 90% of persons aged 13 years and older living with HIV who are aware of their HIV infection, working from a baseline of 79% in 2006. The webinar will be held on Thursday, June 21 from 12:00-12:45 p.m. EDT. Be sure to register for the webinar soon to reserve your spot.

As we noted in a blog post about the LHIs last fall, our efforts to work towards the National HIV/AIDS Strategy’s (NHAS) goals are strengthened by the inclusion of this measure among the LHIs because it helps us communicate to a wide variety of partners, including the general public, state and local health departments, and policy makers, what steps they can take to help us, as a nation, achieve the NHAS goals.

The webinar will feature ‘The Bronx Knows,’ an initiative that has been successful in diagnosing people in the Bronx who are HIV positive and connecting them to much-neede care.

The webinar will feature “The Bronx Knows,” an initiative that has been successful in diagnosing people in the Bronx who are HIV-positive and connecting them to much-needed care. The initiative is led by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in partnership with numerous community and faith-based organizations, hospitals, and community health centers in the Bronx. Additionally, the Assistant Secretary for Health, Dr. Howard Koh, will announce new data on the national percentage of people living with HIV who are aware of their status. The presenters will then answer your questions related to this month’s topic. We encourage members of the HIV/AIDS community and other interested stakeholders to register for and tune in to the webinar later this month to learn more.

In addition to the webinar, the June monthly health observance toolkit on Healthfinder.gov, which is managed by ODPHP, features ways individuals and organizations can promote and participate in National HIV Testing Day. The toolkit begins with a brief overview on NHTD; provides sample messages for dissemination via newsletters, listservs and Twitter; and offers ideas on actions that can be taken and tools that can be shared with others interested in learning more.

Finally, Healthfinder.gov is also featuring a new e-card about HIV testing this month for use by all of its visitors. The message inside the e-card urges readers to get tested, providing a link to the AIDS.gov HIV/AIDS Prevention & Services Provider Locator. Users can add a custom message to the e-card and disseminate to as many as 10 friends at once.

As the National HIV/AIDS Strategy notes, “too many people living with HIV are unaware of their status.”

Help us get the word out by sharing information about the leading health indicator webinar and the various tools described in this blog.