amfAR Launches New Ending the HIV Epidemic Database
NEW YORK, September 4, 2019 – amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, today announced the launch of an interactive visual tool created in response to President Trump’s plan—Ending the HIV Epidemic—to end new HIV transmissions in the U.S. by 2030. The database zeroes in on the “geographic hotspots” of HIV that are targeted in the plan by offering contextual data of service availability, policy and infectious disease information for each state and locality.
amfAR’s free and interactive Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) database— ehe.amfar.org—enables users to examine epidemiological trends, policies and health services data across the seven states and 48 counties, plus Washington, DC, and San Juan, PR, identified in the Ending the HIV Epidemic plan. Utilizing maps, charts, and graphs, the database allows users to compare sites by policy (e.g., Medicaid expansion, HIV criminalization), infectious disease epidemiology (HIV and Hepatitis C), and availability of services such as Ryan White medical clinics and Federally Qualified Health Centers.
“The goal of the EHE database is to help policymakers, public health officials, advocates and other stakeholders understand the opportunities and challenges across EHE jurisdictions, and to provide baseline contextual data in each locality that may impact outcomes,” Greg Millett, Vice President and Director of Public Policy at amfAR, said.
The Federal government will evaluate the effectiveness of President Trump’s Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative via traditional indicators such as HIV incidence, knowledge of serostatus, HIV diagnoses, linkage to HIV medical care, viral suppression, and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) coverage. Although crucial to evaluating outcomes, these indicators must be grounded in situational factors captured in amfAR’s database such as poverty, LGBT insurance discrimination, availability of providers and other factors that may impact access to HIV prevention and care in EHE jurisdictions.
The Ending the HIV Epidemic database is the latest in amfAR’s repertoire of visual tools to summarize data, including the Opioid & Health Indicators Database, the PEPFAR Country/Regional Operational Plans (COPs/ROPs) Database, and the PEPFAR Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Database.