RESEARCH ARTICLE
HIV Testing among Adolescents and Youth in the United States: Update from the 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
Joseph Inungu*, 1, Averetta Lewis1, Mustafa Z Younis2, Jessica Wood1, Sarah O’Brien1, Deidre Verdun3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 5
First Page: 80
Last Page: 85
Publisher ID: TOAIDJ-5-80
DOI: 10.2174/1874613601105010080
Article History:
Received Date: 1/1/2011Revision Received Date: 7/3/2011
Acceptance Date: 11/4/2011
Electronic publication date: 29/8/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Objectives:
We examined the prevalence of HIV testing in a representative sample of US adolescents and youth, assessed the location and method of testing used during their last HIV testing, and compare the characteristics of those who had and had not been tested for HIV.
Methods and Principal Findings:
Data on adolescents and youth who participated in the 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey were analyzed. Of the 6,628 adolescents and youth who participated in the 2009 BRFSS, 54.4% were male, 59.1% were white, 37.4% graduated from high school, 29.6% live in the western states in the United States. Their mean age was 20.9 years (± 2.07 SD). Of these participants, 31.8% had been tested for HIV. The majority of adolescents had been tested for HIV either at private physician offices (38%) or public clinics (31.7%) compared to HIV counseling and testing sites (3.1%). Only 30.5% of adolescents were tested using a rapid HIV antibody test. Being female, African-American, Asian or multiracial, divorced/widowed, and living in the Western and NorthEastern states in the United States were associated with a high probability of testing for HIV.
Conclusions:
The low prevalence of adolescents who tested for HIV and the low proportion of those offered rapid HIV testing after the 2006 CDC’s new guidelines about HIV testing raise serious concerns about the effectiveness of HIV prevention efforts particularly among adolescents. More innovative strategies are needed to increase the number of adolescents and youth who become aware of their HIV serostatus.
