Housing Works: Housing Prevents AIDS. Housing Improves Health.

Tomorrow is National HIV Testing Day, an important reminder that HIV testing is the first step to linking people with lifesaving care, as well as an opportunity to provide counseling for people who test both HIV-positive and negative. This occasion should also serve as a reminder that HIV testing laws should maintain true written informed consent and counseling.

There are currently four bills floating around Albany that would change Article 27-f HIV rules regarding counseling and testing. And while the chance of any of these bills being passed in Albany this session is incredibly unlikely, today is as good a day as any to remember the principles Housing Works recommends for any HIV testing legislation. Twenty-five organizations have endorsed the principles, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal, Legal Action Center and Bronx AIDS Services:

• 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.

Now, with those simple guidelines in place, test away!

To get involved in the fight to retain written informed consent in New York State or endorse the above principles, contact terri smith-caronia at smith-caronia@housingworks.org.