Beyond the IT Magic Bullet: HIV Prevention Education and Public Policy

Authors

Fay C. Payton, North Carolina State University

Keywords

African Americans; Analytics; HIV; HIV infections – Treatment; HIV-positive persons; HIV (Viruses); ICT; Medical statistics; Public Policy; Substance Abuse

Disciplines

Community-Based Research | Demography, Population, and Ecology | Immune System Diseases | Medicine and Health | Public Health | Public Policy | Race and Ethnicity | Virus Diseases

Abstract

Analytic applications are vital in the assessments of public health and surveillance as these applications can drive resource allocation, community assessment and public policy. Using a dataset of nearly 90,000 patient hospital encounters, the number of instances with an ICD code of HIV and co-morbidities was identified. Blacks accounted for 75 percent of HIV hospital encounters in the dataset. While business analytic applications informed this study of cross-tabulations and interaction effects among race, age and gender, there appears to be a significant relationship among HIV diagnoses and substance abuse. Payer data is informed by the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), and these findings indicate significant service utilization among those insured by Medicare. More importantly, these issues raise more salient implications among the current health and public policy among HIV care delivery, in general, and among the Black community, in particular. Attention to health and public policy warrants further investigation given that this discourse has shifted to a focus on curvative medicine and away from prevention and education.

Recommended Citation

Payton, Fay C. (2009) "Beyond the IT Magic Bullet: HIV Prevention Education and Public Policy," Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 2.
Available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/jhdrp/vol3/iss2/2