“Everything…Fell Apart Once COVID-19 Hit”—Leveraging the COVID-19 Response to Strengthen Public Health Activities toward Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Qualitative Study

Samantha A. Devlin, Moctezuma Garcia, Kayo Fujimoto, Camden Hallmark, Marlene McNeese, John Schneider and Moira C. McNulty ()
Additional contact information
Samantha A. Devlin: Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Moctezuma Garcia: School of Social Work, San José State University, San Jose, CA 95112, USA
Kayo Fujimoto: Department of Health Promotion & Behavioral Sciences, Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA
Camden Hallmark: Division of Disease Prevention and Control, Houston Health Department, Houston, TX 77054, USA
Marlene McNeese: Division of Disease Prevention and Control, Houston Health Department, Houston, TX 77054, USA
John Schneider: Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Moira C. McNulty: Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 22, 1-11

Abstract: COVID-19 caused widespread disruption of activities for Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE). In this study we assessed public health perspectives on leveraging the COVID-19 response to advance the goals of EHE. We conducted a qualitative study with 33 public health partners in the Midwestern and Southern United States from October 2020 to February 2022. Participants were asked how the strategies developed for COVID-19 could be applied to the HIV epidemic. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and examined using rapid qualitative analysis. Four themes emerged: (1) Rebuilding teams and adapting culture for success in EHE activities; (2) Recognizing and modernizing the role of disease intervention specialists (DIS); (3) Enhanced community awareness of the public health role in disease response and prevention; and (4) Leveraging COVID-19 data systems and infrastructure for EHE activities. The COVID-19 pandemic called attention to the dearth of public health funding and outdated information technology (IT) infrastructure used for HIV activities. It also led to greater public health knowledge, including increased familiarity with partner services and molecular epidemiology of HIV, and opportunities to develop new data systems for surveillance that can be applied to efforts for EHE.

Keywords: COVID-19; HIV; EHE; partner services; contact tracing; molecular epidemiology; data systems; public health; information technology infrastructure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/15247/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/15247/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:22:p:15247-:d:976864

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().