Anonymous testing means that nothing ties your test results to you. When you take an anonymous HIV test, you get a unique identifier that allows you to get your test results. You can also purchase a self-test if you want to test anonymously. Confidential testing means that your name and other identifying information will be attached to your test results. The results will go in your medical record and may be shared with your health care providers and your health insurance company.
Otherwise, the results are protected by state and federal privacy laws, and they can be released only with your permission. With confidential testing, if you test positive for HIV, the test result and your name will be reported to the state or local health department to help public health officials get better estimates of the rates of HIV in the state. The state health department will then remove all personal information about you name, address, etc.
CDC does not share this information with anyone else, including insurance companies. For more information, see HIV. Whether you disclose your status to others is your decision. Having the choice between anonymous testing or confidential testing removes any emotional barriers that may prevent those at risk from HIV infection seeking essential medication they potentially need. Sexually Transmitted Disease. It is used alongside other accepted risk-reducing methods such as not sharing needles and using condoms during sex.
It is not intended for those who are concerned about HIV infection following a one-off occasion such as a casual one-night stand or in the event of a condom bursting. There is a very short time window, just 72 hours, during which the medication is most effective. Confidential Testing: regulations may vary in different states, but with confidential testing, your medical records and information is protected by federal law, which governs who the information can be revealed to.
To find out more about available anonymous testing, visit the website of your local health department. Getting tested for HIV is voluntary and can be done through confidential or anonymous testing. Free Download WordPress Themes. Human immunodeficiency virus is the only infectious disease for which anonymous testing is publicly funded, an exception that has been controversial.
Proponents of anonymous testing believe that it encourages persons who would not otherwise seek testing to learn their HIV infection status by eliminating the concern about potential loss of confidentiality.
Persons tested anonymously who learn that they are HIV positive may be motivated by their test result to seek medical care earlier in the course of the disease than they might had only confidential testing been available.
Some studies have suggested that anonymous testing increases the number of people who are willing to be voluntarily tested for HIV. In North Carolina, counties that offered anonymous testing experienced greater growth in testing than did counties that continued to offer only confidential testing.
Because people who test HIV positive anonymously cannot be individually identified, reporting systems that rely on the results of anonymous testing are prone to measurement error.
It can be difficult to detect repeat tests, and the potential exists for duplicate reporting. Anonymous testing may undermine partner notification. Because studies have been small, have been performed in only 1 state, or did little to control for differences in the characteristics of persons who used anonymous vs confidential testing, it has been difficult to draw clear conclusions about the value of anonymous HIV testing.
We assessed the association of the type of HIV test anonymous or confidential with when in the course of the disease persons with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome AIDS 1 learned of their HIV infection and 2 sought HIV-related medical care.
In each state we sought to interview, after obtaining consent, all persons who were described as having newly diagnosed AIDS in a 1-year period or a probability sample of new cases, depending on the projected incidence of new AIDS diagnoses in the state.
An expected number of persons with newly diagnosed AIDS was estimated from the number reported from the previous year who met the sampling frame criteria. In states with an expected incidence of fewer than cases, all new cases were sampled Arizona, Mississippi, and New Mexico. In the remaining states, a probability sample was stratified by 4 HIV mode-of-exposure groups based on reported behavioral information in HARS: 1 men who have sex with men MSM , including those with a reported history of injection drug use; 2 heterosexual injection drug users; 3 cases reported with no identified risk; and 4 all other modes of exposure heterosexual contact, transfusion, hemophilia.
To get adequate numbers in each stratum for analysis, we calculated sampling fractions with the goal of sampling equal numbers from each stratum. Colorado, Missouri, and Oregon sampled MSM and took all cases in the other 3 strata; North Carolina sampled 3 strata and took all in the other stratum; and Texas sampled all 4 strata. Uniform random numbers were generated for each new case in the 4 strata, and a new case with a random number equal to or less than the sampling fraction was selected for the study.
Sampled cases were considered eligible for the study if they were living in the state, English or Spanish speaking, and healthy enough to consent to and complete an interview. To avoid biasing our response rate upward by delaying the performance of the interview, patients who had died before the time of first contact were counted in the denominator of eligibles if contact had not been made within 6 months of report.
Public health surveillance personnel in each state developed procedures for contacting and interviewing potential subjects. All procedures were monitored by the University of California and CDC to ensure uniform methods across the states.
Surveillance personnel completed an outcome report form for each sampled case, which indicated the consent process and the final outcome. Subjects were interviewed in either Spanish or English. The instrument was translated into Spanish and then back-translated to English before a final Spanish version was produced.
Interviewers and supervisors from the state health departments were trained in joint training sessions in conducting a standard interview. States used between 1 and 4 interviewers to administer the survey and all study sites were visited at least once by University of California and CDC investigators to assess the consistency of their technique.
All completed interviews and outcome report forms were stripped of personal identifiers, copied, and mailed to the University of California for data entry and conversion into electronic Statistical Analysis System SAS Institute Inc, Cary, NC files for analysis. We compared the characteristics of respondents who were tested anonymously with those who were tested confidentially and examined whether the type of HIV test was associated with when in the course of the disease a subject sought HIV testing and HIV-related medical care.
Type of HIV testing was classified as anonymous or confidential depending on whether the subject reported giving a number anonymous or a name confidential to get the HIV test result. Subjects who in response to an explicit question said that they gave a false name were excluded from the analysis. To assess the validity of our method for classifying the type of HIV test, we compared the subject's report of having given a number or a name to obtain their test result with the type of testing site.
Assuming that testing in a physician's office, hospital, jail or prison, or blood bank should have been reported as testing by name confidential testing , we found that Of those who reported that they had received their test result by number anonymous testing , only 6. We limited our analysis to respondents who first tested HIV positive in the state from which they were sampled, lived in states that offered both anonymous and confidential testing Mississippi excluded , and voluntarily sought HIV testing as opposed to being required to obtain a test because of regulations associated with prisons, drug treatment programs, the military, insurance plans, or blood banks.
Thus, subjects were considered volunteers for testing if they, in response to a checklist of questions, reported that their reason for testing was 1 they felt sick and wanted to find out whether they had HIV, 2 they thought they might have HIV even if they did not feel sick, 3 someone told them that they should get tested, or 4 someone from the health department told them that they had had contact with an infected sex or needle-sharing partner.
Date of first HIV-positive test result and date of first medical care for HIV infection were self-reported as a month and a year. We compared subjects on the basis of whether they had symptoms of weight loss without dieting, fevers, heavy night sweats, diarrhea, oral thrush, frequent vaginal yeast infections, memory problems, shingles, pneumonia, Kaposi sarcoma, lymphoma, meningitis, or tuberculosis at the time they learned they had HIV.
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