PrEP Awareness Puts Some Populations at Greater Risk than Others. What Can You Do?

Low awareness of potentially lifesaving preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV may be leaving Black, Hispanic, and Latino patients at a disproportionate risk for illness and death compared with other patient populations according to an analysis of National HIV Prevention Program Monitoring and Evaluation data published recently by JAMA Network. Hispanic and Latino people make up 18% of the U.S. population but accounted for 29% of new U.S. HIV diagnoses between 2015 and 2019. Black Americans comprise 13% of the population but accounted for 41% of new diagnoses here. Not surprisingly, this led the authors to suggest that a more targeted effort to reach those patients is needed. The prospect of offering PrEP services in urgent care is a controversial one for a variety of reasons (one being that frequent, ongoing monitoring is an essential component of the process). These were discussed in detail in an article JUCM published, entitled Is PrEP Appropriate for Urgent Care? JUCM has also published a thought-provoking article on healthcare inequities, The Challenge of Inequity in Urgent Care Medicine: A Call to Action. Both are available in our archive.