For Orange County, HIV cases remain steady, but the CDC and the Florida Department of Health continue work to educate people about their health with National HIV testing day.
Black and Hispanic or Latino people across the country made up 69% of CDC reported infections in 2021– that’s the most recent year for which data is available.
University of Central Florida’s chair of the department of Population Health Sciences in the college of medicine, Eric Schrimshaw, said in Orange County, African Americans and Hispanic or Latino people account for 84% of all infections in 2022.
Schrimshaw said infections can be helped through routine testing, prevention methods like pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP, but that we still see high rates among these groups.
“Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of individuals who are making use of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or prEP, are white men,” Schrimshaw said. “And we see much lower rates of prep uptake among Black and Latino men. There's a variety of reasons why that might be including stigma…I think routine testing needs to be occurring far more often. I think many individuals don't feel the need to go for testing.”
The CDC encourages everyone between the ages of 13 to 65 to be tested at least once in their life, while people with certain risk factors should get tested more frequently.
But Schrimshaw says even getting tested can be a problem in some communities.
“We often see uneven distributions or inequities in HIV testing is transportation and simply work schedules. If you work, as an hourly worker, and inherently need to work 8am to five or 6pm, when these offices are open for testing, then that can make that a real challenge to get in for testing even if you want to,” Schrimshaw said.
Between 2021 and 2022, in Orange County there was a 2% increase in cases from 375 to 423. Schrimshaw said the decline is likely due to the pandemic and cases remain fairly steady for the county. Still, he urges all people to get tested regardless. He moved to Florida to work at UCF because of the volume of HIV cases here and to continue his research.
“Florida is number three in the country in the raw number of new HIV infections every year,” Schrimshaw said. “That's a pretty consistent finding every year, and about 50% of all new infections in the nation in the US, happened within the southeastern United States.”
