New CDC Funding Opportunity to Support Continuity of HIV Care for Newly-Released Prison Inmates

Content From: HIV.gov•Published: May 22, 2020•2 min read

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a funding opportunity announcement to develop effective, sustainable, and replicable program models that support continuity of HIV care for individuals with HIV who have been released from state prisons into the community. These model programs will emphasize linkage to and retention in community HIV care, adherence to HIV treatment, and suppression of HIV viral load. They will also include strategies to identify people with HIV and HIV-negative persons who are at risk for HIV among sex and drug-injection partners and associates of program participants and link those individuals to care and prevention services.

Effective programs are needed to help people with HIV maintain viral suppression after their release from prison. Approximately 1.5 million individuals are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and an estimated 1.3 percent of them have HIV. While in prison, those with diagnosed HIV have access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and a correctional health provider; however, when they are released, they often face barriers to HIV care that can impede their ability to achieve and maintain viral suppression.

Program models will use a systems-level approach, supported by partnerships with community-based healthcare and service providers, to ensure participants have access to services that reduce barriers to retention in care and support sustained viral suppression.

This funding opportunity will contribute to federal and state efforts aligned with meeting the goals of Ending the HIV Epidemic, the federal government’s initiative that aims end the HIV epidemic in the United States by 2030. One of the initiative’s key strategies is to treat people with HIV rapidly and effectively to reach sustained viral suppression. This includes engaging or re-engaging those who are diagnosed in ongoing HIV care so that they can achieve and maintain control of the virus.