
HIV.gov developed this tool to feature the personal stories of Black men who have sex with men who have successfully navigated the HIV Care Continuum from initial diagnosis to achieving viral suppression.
According to HIV.gov, The 2016 National HIV/AIDS Strategy "is a five-year plan that details principles, priorities, and actions to guide our collective national response to the HIV epidemic." The goals are to:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses its surveillance data to track indicators for the first three goals. State and local health departments submit data on six indicators of the HIV epidemic, and CDC analyzes them to create a national picture. The six indicators track the number of people who are:
Together these numbers are summarized into four stages of HIV care known as the HIV Care Continuum. Sometimes the HIV Care Continuum is referred to as the Treatment Cascade. When Gardner et. al first measured these numbers and represented them graphically, the graph cascaded down from diagnoses to viral suppression. It identified that more people need to be in HIV medical care to stop the drop-off in achieving viral suppression gaps.
A November 2014 Vital Signs report published by the CDC discusses the following stages of the continuum:
The HIV Care Continuum data for youth shows that youth living with HIV, especially young Black men who have sex with men, are falling out of care and not maintaining viral suppression. Among youth living with HIV, only 40% are getting connected to care. Even fewer are being retained in care, starting ART, and achieving viral suppression. To add to that, over half of young people ages 13-24 living with HIV do not know they are infected.
The goal of comprehensive HIV care is to maintain viral suppression. The HIV Care Continuum's stages revolve around people living with HIV (PLWH) and their health care providers working together to ensure that PLWH get the care they need to maintain viral suppression.