On December 6th, 2023 San Francisco Department of Public Health’s, ARHCES HIV section released the 2022 Annual HIV Epidemiology Report. This follows World AIDS Day which was Thursday November 30th. 

Team Leads also presented an update on HIV and STIs to the SF Health Commission on December 5th. Recordings can be found on the Health Commission’s website.

Here is a link to the DPH Press Release on the 2022 HIV annual summary: https://sf.gov/news/
department-public-health-
releases-2022-hiv-
epidemiology-annual-report.

Below are links to some local news reporting -

• KQED: SF Reports Latinx Majority in New HIV Diagnoses Despite Overall Drop
• SF Chronicle: New HIV cases are declining in San Francisco, except among Latino men
• Bay Area Reporter: Latinos now have highest rate of new SF HIV cases

STI/HIV Director Dr. Stephanie Cohen, wanted especially acknowledge and appreciate the amazing work that EVERYONE in our program does to support our HIV Getting to Zero efforts, and our Ending the HIV/STI/HCV Epidemics goals.

Recognizing the work being done in  supporting equitable access to PrEP and doxy-PEP.   Nationwide, only 30% of PrEP eligible individuals (and only 11% of Black/AA individuals) are on PrEP.  This is compared to >67% of MSM at SFCC.

 Also notable in the report (and slide pasted below), is that the % of PEH with HIV who were virally suppressed increased from 20% in 2020 to 52% in 2022 – I know this would not have happened without the amazing work of our LINCS team.

Increasing rates of HIV in Latinx men are a concerning trend in the report.  I also want to thank our many bilingual staff who provide language-concordant care to monolingual Spanish speaking patients, and ALL of our staff who provide culturally-affirming, stigma free care to Latinx patients.