ePrimaryCare Review

In Clinical Practice: Overcoming Patient Barriers to PrEP

Editor's note:

In this podcast, Guest Author Dr. Douglas Krakower notes that “people who are living with HIV and use ART are at much lower risk of transmitting the virus to their partners.” Dr. Krakower has advised us this statement has been further bolstered by recently published evidence supporting the “U=U” (Undetectable viral levels equals Untransmittable virus) concept. Data reinforcing the decreased risk of viral transmission with ART treatment include 2019 studies published in The Lancet, JAMA, and Lancet HIV (among other sources). 

In this issue:

PrEP — pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV transmission — is safe, it’s effective, and it’s significantly underused in the U.S.  One key barrier to increased PrEP use is a lack of awareness and acceptance among the patient populations most at-risk for new HIV infection.

In this podcast, Dr. Douglas Krakower from Harvard Medical School takes us into the exam room to translate the new information in his Newsletter Issue into clinical practice.

Learning objectives:

• Summarize the priority populations where PrEP implementation is likely to have the greatest impact.
• Identify how to help at-risk patients with limited awareness of PrEP make informed decisions about accepting PrEP.
• Describe an unbiased approach to prescribing decisions about HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis.