Arkansas HIV Surveillance, Prevention, and Ending the Epidemic statewide initiatives. - The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) is a centralized agency with the Central Office being in Little Rock, AR. Individual ADH administered local health unit locations are within each of the state’s seventy-five counties grouped into five public health regions (Central, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest). The HIV Surveillance, Prevention, and Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) programs are administered within the Central Office, under the managerial leadership of the Division for Health Protection (DHP), Infectious Disease Branch. Arkansas is a dual reporting state therefore it is mandatory for medical providers and laboratory facilities to report positive and negative HIV test results; and all testing occurrences of viral loads and CD4 counts. The majority of HIV laboratory data is reported electronically and uploaded to the state’s eHARS database. The HIV Surveillance Program coordinates with the ADH Informatics department for continuous onboarding of smaller facilities for electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) based upon the facilities’ capability and capacity to report HL7 messages. Arkansas has identified 6,720 people living with HIV/AIDS, and 307 of these persons were newly diagnosed in 2022. Approximately 50% of all people diagnosed with HIV had a reported sexually transmitted disease (STD) diagnosis in the same year. Therefore, the HIV Prevention program has implemented integrated testing including HIV, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and hepatitis C within programmatic outreach activities. In addition, funded sub-recipient organizations are required to perform integrated testing. Organizations are provided STD testing supplies and are authorized as private submitters to the Arkansas Public Health Laboratory for confirmatory testing of their collected specimens. In anticipation of the next five-year grant cycle, the HIV Prevention program has transitioned to implementation of a syndemic approach towards testing, education, and training. Specifically, the program has restructured and retitled its training. The training is now called Syndemic Training. The training is directed towards community members, clinical personnel, and others to ensure understanding of the prevention, treatment, and resources available statewide for infectious diseases. The training also covers best practices for performing testing and counseling within community outreach settings. Lastly, the HIV Prevention program is the co-chair, along with the community co-chair, for advocacy and engagement on the Arkansas HIV Planning Group (HPG). The HPG takes an integrated approach for the prevention, testing, and treatment of infectious diseases. The HPG meets bi-monthly and host an annual conference. The Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative was launched in 2019, and Arkansas was identified as one of seven states to receive additional federal grant funding for expanding capacity to decrease new HIV diagnoses through the utilization of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), ensuring persons diagnosed with HIV are receiving care and treatment, and responding to outbreaks. Through the EHE initiative, Arkansas has increased its public health and community workforce for identifying persons with HIV and linking individuals to services. Specifically, the EHE Program employs Disease Intervention Specialists (DIS) designated solely for the case management, partner services, and linkage to care of newly diagnose HIV cases. Lastly, the EHE program has successfully resolved the state’s transportation barrier through implementation of a statewide transportation system servicing HIV prevention (PrEP), care, treatment, and supportive services. The transportation system has been imperative in enabling persons living in rural areas of state to access HIV care providers. The program will continue making quality improvements to the transportation system by implementing electronic transport pick-up requests and confirmations.
