The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collects, analyzes, and disseminates surveillance data on HIV infection; these data are one of the nation’s primary sources of information on HIV in the United States. The annual surveillance report, published by the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP), summarizes information about diagnosed HIV infection in the United States and dependent areas. HIV surveillance data are used by CDC’s public health partners in other federal agencies, health departments, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and the general public to help focus prevention efforts, plan services, allocate resources, develop policy, and monitor trends in HIV infection.

Estimated numbers and rates of diagnoses of HIV infection are included from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 6 U.S. dependent areas (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the Republic of Palau, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). Because states implemented confidential name-based HIV infection reporting at different times, the displayed data on diagnosed HIV infection begin with data from 2008, the first year that all areas had name-based reporting.

During 2008–2012, the annual estimated number of diagnoses of HIV infection in the United States remained stable; however, the rate decreased. Estimated numbers and rates of diagnoses of HIV infection increased in some subgroups and decreased in others. Variations in trends among groups are expected and may be due to differences in testing behaviors, targeted HIV testing initiatives, more streamlined surveillance practices in some jurisdictions, and possibly changes in the numbers of new HIV infections in some subgroups. HIV incidence surveillance data provide the best indication of changes in the numbers of new HIV infections.

As the capacity and the need for monitoring the burden of HIV disease have evolved, so has the National HIV Surveillance System (NHSS). In 2006, CDC began to assist local surveillance jurisdictions in the implementation of the Enhanced HIV/AIDS Reporting System (eHARS). This secure, browser-based application was developed by CDC to assist surveillance programs in reporting, managing, importing, and exporting data, and transferring data (without personal identifying information) to CDC. By December 2011, the implementation of eHARS was complete.

During the implementation of eHARS, data were reported to CDC in 1 of 2 formats: (1) that for the previously used HIV/AIDS Reporting System (HARS), from jurisdictions that had not yet converted to eHARS or (2) that for eHARS. To reconcile the for- mats, eHARS data were back-converted to the HARS format for all national analyses through the December 2012 national data set.

This HIV Surveillance Report marks the first use of data from the updated National Data Processing (NDP) system. NDP compiles HIV surveillance data transmitted (through eHARS) to CDC by local, state, and territorial health departments and creates national data sets for reporting, analysis, and evaluation. Key differences between the previous and current national data processing include the following:

• Duplicate processing: Deduplication, more accurate in updated NDP’s compilation of eHARS data, results in lower overall numbers (approximately 1% fewer cases in the national data set).

• Race calculation: NDP uses information from multiple records for a case when additional race information is available. The additional race information that is available in eHARS results in an increase (approximately 70%) in the total number of persons of multiple races living with diagnosed HIV.

This report marks the first time that HIV diagnosis trend data are available for 5 years. Because all states had implemented confidential name-based HIV infec- tion reporting by 2008, tables displaying trends in this report begin with data from 2008.

Publication of this report would not have been possible without the contributions of the state and territorial health departments and the HIV surveillance programs that provided surveillance data to CDC.

Suggested citation: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HIV Surveillance Report, 2012; vol. 24. http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/library/reports/surveillance/. Published November 2014.

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