Fast-Track Cities HIV Data

Linkage to care is a crucial early step in successful HIV treatment and prevention of HIV transmission. It enables and connects individuals diagnosed with HIV by offering guided support to get involved in the first steps of HIV medical care and maintaining engagement.

The data shown here describe the number/percentage of individuals who visited an HIV health care provider within 1 month/30 days after learning they were HIV positive. The data includes adults and adolescents newly diagnosed with HIV disease in Missouri with a lab result indicating CD4 or viral load numbers within one month or 30 days of diagnosis, the optimal goal.

HIV treatment has dramatically improved the health, quality of life, and life expectancy of people living with HIV. This happens when people living with HIV take HIV medicine as prescribed and achieve and keep an undetectable viral load known as viral suppression. Individuals who are virally suppressed in addition to an improved quality of life and improved health have effectively no risk of transmitting HIV to their HIV-negative sexual partners. There are many critical factors that affect whether a person has the opportunity to achieve viral suppression.

Viral suppression in this data is defined as adults and adolescents diagnosed with HIVwho resided in Missouri at the time of their most recent diagnosis of HIV and is indicated by the result of their most recent viral load lab of 200 copies/ml or less. Many people can reach viral suppression and even undetectable status (less than 20 copies of HIV in their blood) within 2-6 months of starting HIV medication.

To further characterize viral suppression in the region, this data visualization shows viral suppression at a local clinic in St. Louis. The data describes the improvement of viral suppression that patients have achieved from 2015-2019 in a local area clinic. These data show the level of virological control (viral suppression) achieved by the clinic's patients based on their viral reports in that year. Different from the viral suppression data described previously, this data provides a snapshot of viral suppression performance based on more than one lab in the patient's clinic experience in a given year. This characterization provides a perspective as to how dynamic (altering or variable) viral suppression can be for patients within a clinic population.

All Suppressed: individual was virally suppressed on all tests that year.
Some Suppressed: individual was virally suppressed on some but not all tests that year.
None Suppressed: individual was tested but was not virally suppressed that year.