Consistency in HIV Information Across Public Resources:
A Nonpartisan Strategy to Improve Public Health & HIV Knowledge.

Goal: End disparities between medical and legal accuracy in local government resources about HIV.

Modernizing HIV Education and Labor Law in New York City — One-Pager, Spring 2022

Introduction and Background

In the 1990s, at the height of the HIV epidemic in the United States, many jurisdictions passed laws to address the public health crisis they faced. These laws were intended to inform the public about HIV through school and workplace requirements, such as mandatory HIV lessons for children, changes to workplace safety procedures, and guidelines about preventing and treating accidental exposure. Unfortunately, these laws and policies have only rarely been revisited as our understanding of HIV has improved, resulting in a dangerous, and expensive, divergence between legal accuracy and medical accuracy over time. Inconsistent information causes confusion and mistrust – a fact the COVID epidemic is currently demonstrating all too well.

ACT UP proposes a direct, nonpartisan strategy to improve the public’s understanding of how to prevent and treat HIV through carefully-tailored laws, resolutions, and policy changes in the areas of Education and Labor. By keeping these legal changes specific, and prioritizing the most broadly-supported, it is possible to minimize the controversy that so often surrounds — and delays — policy changes related to HIV, resulting in more accurate information reaching the public sooner. These changes would improve the average New Yorker’s knowledge of HIV and public health, which would reduce transmissions and social stigma, thus contributing to finally ending the HIV epidemic.

Proposed Changes

• A Local Law requiring that the already-mandatory NYC HIV curriculum, and/or resources provided to teachers by the NYCDOE, be regularly checked for medical accuracy, in accordance with CDC recommendations. Ideally a review should occur every 5 years, and no more than every 10. The current curriculum is from 2012, and the new curriculum won’t be ready until 2023. It should not be 11 years between medical accuracy checks.

• Either a Local Law establishing a specific meaningful, verifiable compliance mechanism that ensures equivalent HIV information has been shared with all public school students at certain grade levels, or a requirement that the NYCDOE develop such a mechanism. The current compliance mechanism is an unverifiable tickbox.

• A Local Law requiring that all OSHA/PESH materials disseminated in NYC that cover bloodborne pathogens (BBP), and already contain information about Hepatitis prevention, be supplemented to:

  • (A) include information about pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, and

  • (B) make clear that some workplace activities, though they may carry a risk of exposure to one specific BBP, such as HBV, carry no risk of exposure to HIV.

• A Local Law requiring that public-facing NYC public employees (such as teachers and police) undergo medically-accurate HIV training, and that the materials used for such trainings be updated for medical accuracy at regular intervals, ideally every 5 years. Current trainings are not consistently medically-accurate.

• A resolution calling for a professional review of all federal and state OSHA/PESH materials to ensure they are medically accurate when referring to how HIV is transmitted and prevented, as distinct from Hepatitis and other bloodborne pathogens. Materials must also be sufficiently clear to average readers.

• A resolution calling for clarification of Article 10 of New York State’s Mental Hygiene Law so that it cannot be used prejudicially against people with HIV.

Conclusion

The lack of clear, modern, medically accurate HIV information in communications between government agencies and the public undermines both individual and community health. The proposed changes help rectify the divergence of legal and medical accuracy, while providing opportunities for the development of durable, replicable models that will reduce stigma and transmissions, helping to end the epidemic once and for all.