Routine HIV Screening — What Counts in Evidence-Based Policy?

Abstract

In January 2011, the President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS called on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) to reconsider its 2005 determination that the scientific evidence did not justify routine testing for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in adolescents and adults in the general U.S. population. In July, the Institute of Medicine issued a report calling for annual HIV screening in all sexually active women. These are the most recent episodes in a struggle that began in 2006, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended routine HIV testing. Normally, USPSTF decisions receive little attention. Sometimes, however-for example, when the Task Force recommended against routine mammography for women in their 40s-there is political fallout, and observers question what kind of evidence should count and who should make those determinations. The battle over HIV screening, though less public and heated than the mammography debate, demonstrates how the same evidence can lead the country's top public health agency and the body charged by the government with providing scientifically grounded recommendations on clinical preventive interventions to reach dramatically different conclusions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).