Donna E. Sweet, MD, AAHIVS, MACP - The HIV Prevention–Certified Provider Program: A Training and Certificate Program Designed to Improve Competencies and Expand the HIV Prevention Workforce

Go online to PeerView.com/VQJ860 to view the activity, download slides and practice aids, and complete the post-test to earn credit. No single prevention method or approach can stop the HIV epidemic on its own. Several interventions have proved highly effective in reducing the risk of, and protecting against, HIV infection, including male and female condoms, the use of antiretroviral medicines as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and the treatment of people living with HIV, to reduce viral load and prevent onward transmission. Despite the availability of this widening array of effective HIV prevention tools and a massive scale-up of HIV treatment in recent years, new infections among adults globally have not decreased sufficiently, and infections have actually increased in the United States among African American gay and bisexual men and Hispanic/Latino gay and bisexual men. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued clinical practice guidelines for PrEP use in the United States, numerous implementation barriers remain, including questions about the effectiveness of PrEP, optimal settings for provision, cost, and the most effective ways to motivate healthcare practitioners to prescribe PrEP. Protocols to identify individuals who are most likely to benefit from PrEP have been developed, but addressing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities poses additional challenges. This activity will marry Dr. Donna Sweet’s personal experiences in clinical utilization of HIV prevention strategies with practical, evidence-based guidance for patient care decisions, to provide additional motivation and rationale for participants to review their own current management strategies and adjust them as needed to optimize patient care. Upon completion of this CE activity, participants will be able to: Effectively engage clients in conversations about sexual health practices to assess HIV risk factors and support their ability to have healthy sex lives, Develop a set of comprehensive competencies (with a focus on PrEP interventions) based on a provider’s individual client needs, Apply current evidence with individual client needs/preferences when integrating HIV prevention options (eg, PrEP, PEP, viral suppression, female condoms) into practice, Employ culturally competent educational and counseling strategies to improve the uptake of prevention measures among clients at increased risk for HIV infection, Facilitate access to HIV prevention options by effectively connecting clients to available resources, support, and assistance, Describe currently available and emerging tools that have been shown to significantly reduce the risk of HIV transmission or acquisition, Describe currently available methods for client-friendly diagnostic tests that measure and improve adherence to medications.