Utah's HIV Prevention and Surveillance project - The Utah Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Communicable Diseases, HIV/STD Elimination, Analysis, Response, and Treatment Program (HEART) in partnership with local health departments, community-based organizations, and healthcare providers strives to reduce the number of new HIV infections, increase access to care and improve health outcomes for persons living with HIV infection, and reduce-HIV related health disparities. Funding provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supplements limited state funding for these efforts and is vital to the success of Utah's mission. Specifically, CDC funding will allow HEART to enhance surveillance activities to achieve improved monitoring of trends in HIV infection (including trends in disease distribution), improved completeness, timeliness, and quality of HIV data, improved perinatal infection and exposure surveillance, and increased data security, confidentiality, and sharing. HIV prevention activities will also be bolstered by this funding, increasing HEART’s impact on HIV testing, partner services, linkage to and retention in HIV medical care among PLWH, PrEP and PEP education and referral of eligible persons, and availability of condoms. Furthermore, this funding supports the integrated development of plans for early identification, investigation, and response to HIV transmission clusters and outbreaks. HEART surveillance staff actively monitor the epidemic of HIV in Utah and report on health inequities so that HEART prevention staff, partners and community stakeholders are able to target resources to priority populations and reduce HIV-related health disparities. HEART staff with the support of the CDC and in collaboration with local partners and stakeholders aim to get to zero new HIV infections, zero HIV/AIDS-related deaths, and zero HIV stigma.
