What is it about?
More than 1.1 million persons are living with HIV (PLWH) in the United States, and 15.0% are unaware of their HIV infection at the end of 2014 . HIV testing and linking HIV-positive persons to HIV medical care are crucial first steps in the HIV continuum of care. Missing data creates challenges for determining accurate linkage percentages and progress made in linking HIV-positive patients to HIV medical care. A new approach using multiple imputation to address missing linkage data was proposed and results were compared to the current approach that uses data with complete information.
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Why is it important?
To our knowledge, this is the first paper to evaluate programmatic linkage to HIV medical care data utilizing the multiple imputation method. Overall, the percentage referred to HIV medical care and linked within any timeframe after imputation was not significantly different than the percentage found using the complete case analysis method.
Perspectives
Multiple imputation is recommended for addressing missing linkage data in future analyses when the missing percentage is high. The use of multiple imputation for missing values can result in a better understanding of how programs are performing on key HIV testing and HIV service delivery indicators.
Guoshen Wang
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Estimation of the Percentage of Newly Diagnosed HIV-Positive Persons Linked to HIV Medical Care in CDC-Funded HIV Testing Programs, Evaluation & the Health Professions, August 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0163278717725372.
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