Using HIV Surveillance Data to Link People to HIV Medical Care, 5 US States, 2012-2015:

Introduction:From 2012 through 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided funding to 5 health departments for demonstration projects using HIV surveillance data to link people with newly diagnosed HIV to care. We assessed how well these health departments established linkage to care, how the demonstration projects helped them with this work, and if they sustained these activities after CDC funding ended.Materials and Methods:We obtained quantitative and qualitative data on linkage-to-care activities from health department communications and progress reports submitted to CDC. We calculated and combined linkage-to-care results for the 5 health departments, and we compared these results with the combined linkage-to-care results for 61 health departments that received CDC funding for routine HIV prevention activities (eg, HIV testing, linkage to and reengagement in HIV care, HIV partner services) and for the same 5 health departments when they used only routine HIV prevention activiti...