HIV and the Law

Given the importance of law in HIV prevention work, CDC has implemented public health law research methods to systematically collect and assess statutory and regulatory frameworks across a range of legal domains to help determine whether these legal frameworks act as barriers or facilitators to effective HIV prevention.  DHAP has focused on the public health implications of state statutes and regulations across key HIV prevention areas, such as HIV testing, Medicaid reimbursement for routine HIV screening, laboratory reporting of CD4 and viral load data for HIV surveillance, and criminalization of potential HIV exposure.

State legislative searches are conducted in Thomson Reuters Westlaw^® (Thomas Reuters, Eagan, Minnesota) on 51 jurisdictions (50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia) using a verified search string for each type of law. Laws were included if they had at least one characteristic related to the topic being researched.

¹Based on the 2006 “Revised Recommendations for HIV testing of adults, adolescents, and pregnant women in health-Care settings,” consistency was based on two key components: consent and counselling. States’ laws were considered consistent with CDC’s recommendations on the consent component if consent for HIV testing was: opt-out, part of the general medical consent form, and could be given orally. States’ laws were considered consistent with CDC’s recommendations on the counselling component if the law did not require prevention counselling prior to testing.