Housing Works: Housing Prevents AIDS. Housing Improves Health.

Expanding access to voluntary testing

Housing Works believes strongly that people should be allowed to make informed decisions regarding their own health. While HIV testing is of the utmost importance, anyone who takes an HIV test must do so of their own free will.

A long battle among New York AIDS advocates among how to administer HIV testing is underway in Albany, where four competing bills are floating around to overhaul Article 27-f. Article 27-f is the HIV testing and consent law in New York that protects the confidentiality and privacy of anyone who has been tested for or exposed to HIV. It requires doctors to get written informed consent and administer pre- and post-test counseling when people are tested for HIV.

This way, people who learn they are infected with HIV are prepared to deal with the challenges of the illness. And those who are not infected learn by a trained professional how to stay HIV-negative. None of the proposed bills would maintain true informed consent.

Housing Works organized dozens of AIDS group—including New York Civil Liberties Union, Bronx AIDS Services, Community Healthcare Network, Institute for Family Health, and the Legal Action Center—to support a set of testing principles (see “Statement of Principles”, below) and is committed to working in Albany to pass a bill that expands access to testing for all New Yorkers while maintaining written informed consent and pre- and post-test counseling.

Housing Works Statement of Principles

We share the goal of expanding the availability of HIV testing and streamlining the testing process for providers. But expanding and streamlining testing cannot come at the expense of guaranteeing informed consent. In fact, ensuring that people understand what they are being tested for and what a positive test result means in terms of treatment availability, transmission prevention, and confidentiality and antidiscrimination protections is sound public health policy. When people understand the test and its implications, they are more likely to seek treatment and engage in efforts to reduce the spread of HIV.

We believe that:

• Our goal is not testing for testing’s sake. Getting more people tested should not be an end in itself, but rather, a way to reduce the overall number of cases of HIV transmission to connect HIV-infected people with lifesaving care;

• Streamlining the HIV testing process does not require eliminating the protections that informed consent provides, and this is consistent with CDC recommendations;

• Expanding access to testing for all New Yorkers can be done by making HIV-related testing a routine part of primary care;

• It is critical that people freely choose to be tested for HIV and provide informed consent in writing prior to the test to indicate that testing is being done voluntarily;

• Informed consent means that people affirmatively choose whether or not to be tested for HIV, not that they are given the option to decline to be tested;

• People should be fully informed about the availability of anonymous testing, who will have access to the results of the test, how those results can be used and what legal protections exist to vindicate any resulting discrimination before they choose to be tested

• Existing confidentiality protections that do not operate as a barrier to testing must be retained.

What Can You Do?

• Support our advocacy work by becoming a Housing Works member
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