More Support for Expanded HIV Screening and ART Access in the U.S.

The current literature supports the cost-effectiveness of expanding HIV screening and access to antiretroviral therapy (ART). In the latest study on this topic, researchers used dynamic modeling to examine which is more cost-effective in the U.S. — scaling up HIV screening, improving ART access, or both.

In the base-case analysis, the expanded screening intervention consisted of one-time testing of low-risk patients and annual testing of high-risk patients (men who have sex with men; injection-drug users), whereas the ART intervention involved increasing treatment access to 75% (from 50%) among patients with CD4 counts <350 cells/mm³. Key assumptions in the model were that HIV screening decreased risk behaviors by 20% and that ART functioned…