Latino HIV Crisis

While our overall success in curbing the U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic is commendable, Latino HIV health and health care inequities stand out as a national failure that must be addressed urgently.

In 2019, CLAFH sounded an alarm about Latino HIV health, naming it an Invisible Crisis. Despite efforts to raise awareness and political will to address the problem, rates of new infections among Latinos have escalated and health outcomes for Latinos living with HIV are worse than other racial and ethnic groups. We will never be able to achieve our nation’s goal of ending the epidemic if we continue to ignore the unjust and avoidable health inequities facing Latinos—the largest minoritized racial and ethnic group in the U.S. and growing.

The societal and public health failure to adequately address this now historic Invisible Crisis is unacceptable. Now more than ever, CLAFH is committed to ending the Latino HIV health crisis through new research, patient care models, workforce training programs and policy advocacy.

CLAFH recently mapped out a new approach to end the Latino crisis in the New England Journal of Medicine. Our multisectoral call to action for researchers, public health practitioners, clinicians, policymakers and other community and private-sector actors is organized into six action areas:

• Raising visibility
• Conducting meaningful Latino community engagement
• Improving public health responses
• Strengthening HIV service delivery
• Addressing structural drivers
• Fostering research and evidence generation

We must act now with a combination of existing and new approaches to achieve the kind of HIV prevention and care improvements for Latinos that we are seeing with other populations. CLAFH is currently working on a new approach to make HIV prevention and care services more acceptable and effective for Latinos. Our CDC-funded Project Confianza is a study focused on five cities with among the highest new HIV infections among Latino MSM, and examines ways to reduce medical mistrust among Latino MSM to improve the trustworthiness of the HIV prevention and care system.

Resolving the root causes of the Latino HIV Crisis will take a collective effort. To end the historic and ongoing Invisible Crisis, we must address the structural drivers of HIV among Latino communities and engage a diverse set of stakeholders to rethink and improve our national response to this crisis. Please join us. Bookmark this site to stay abreast of our efforts and learn how you can be part of the solution.