The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention just released the 2015 HIV Surveillance Report, which includes detailed information about diagnosed HIV infection in the United States and dependent areas. Together with supplemental reports and analyses published throughout the year, the report provides federal agencies, health departments, nonprofit organizations and other partners the data needed to monitor HIV infections, focus prevention efforts, and allocate resources.
The report highlights a number of key trends for 2010-2014, including the following:
- The annual numbers and rates of HIV diagnoses decreased overall and among both women and men
- HIV diagnosis rates decreased among African Americans, Latinos and whites
- HIV diagnosis rates increased among people ages 25-29, remained stable among those ages 20-24, and decreased among other age groups
- The annual number of diagnoses attributed to male-to-male sexual contact remained stable, while the number attributed to heterosexual contact or injection drug use decreased
- The annual number and rate of deaths of persons with diagnosed HIV decreased
- HIV prevalence reached an all-time high; at the end of 2014, more than 955,000 people were living with diagnosed HIV infection
The declines seen in this report suggest that national HIV prevention efforts are paying off, while signaling the urgent need for intensified prevention among young people and men who have sex with men. Through continued collaboration between national, state, and local partners, the CDC expects to make additional progress. Read the report for more information.
*Note: Thanks to improvements in HIV surveillance methods and data sources, this edition presents all diagnosis, death, and prevalence data without statistical adjustments for delays in reporting of cases to CDC. Such adjustments were long needed to compensate for reporting delays of data. Today, however, reporting of case information is more timely: significantly less time is needed to identify duplicate cases from multiple states, and systems for national data processing have been substantially strengthened, enabling unadjusted data to provide a reliable assessment of the impact of diagnosed HIV infection.