Understanding the Promise: Considering the Experiences of Women Living with HIV to Maximize Effectiveness of HIV Prevention Technologies

BackgroundThe United States' response to HIV was designed primarily to meet the needs of single men without dependent children and its prevention strategies focused primarily on individual behavior change with little attention to the social, cultural, and economic factors fueling HIV risk, especially among indigent and marginalized women. In 2012, the President's Advisory Council called for an updating of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy's Implementation Plan to “achieve specific, targeted and measurable goals for reducing HIV incidence and … improving health care access and health outcomes for women living with HIV.”Outcome MeasuresWomen living with HIV and those at greatest risk of HIV generally live side by side in the same communities and under the same conditions, separated in status only by a positive HIV test and its consequences. Thus, women openly living with HIV constitute an identifiable and accessible source of first-hand information regarding the barriers that keep women out of HIV prevention and care. Their insights, rooted in lived experience, can vitally inform the development of realistic HIV prevention goals and strategies for the successful integration of HIV prevention into the services already accessed by high-risk women. Their expertise, however, is largely untapped.ConclusionsIn this article, women living with HIV summarize the substantial deficits that exist with regard to woman-focused HIV prevention efforts nationally and the policy and practice changes needed to reduce the domestic impact of the HIV epidemic on women and girls. They also outline opportunities for movement in this direction as implementation of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy proceeds.