Climate Change Worsens HIV Prevention and Care: Study Finds
Researchers find that climate change and extreme weather events impact HIV prevention and care through numerous pathways, including increased HIV exposure, reduced testing, and worse health outcomes for people living with HIV, according to a review published in Current Opinions in Infectious Disease.
Researchers analyzed 22 recent studies exploring HIV-related outcomes in the context of climate change and identified several links between extreme weather events and HIV prevention and care.
Climate change-related extreme weather events, such as drought and flooding, were associated with poorer HIV prevention outcomes. Extreme weather events were also linked to increased practices that elevate HIV risk, such as transactional sex and condomless sex, as well as increases in new HIV infection.
The study also uncovered important implications for HIV care among those already living with HIV, such as reduced viral suppression, poorer treatment adherence, and worse physical and mental well-being.
The authors highlighted several important gaps in the existing literature, including the lack of research on specific extreme weather events (e.g., extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes) and in geographic areas with high climate change vulnerability and increasing HIV rates.
They also described a persisting lack of knowledge on extreme weather events and HIV among key marginalized populations, including sex workers, people who use drugs, and gender-diverse persons, as well as how extreme weather events interact with intersecting forms of stigma.
Reference: Logie, Carmen H.a,b,c; MacNeil, Andiea. Climate change and extreme weather events and linkages with HIV outcomes: recent advances and ways forward. Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases 38(1):p 26-36, February 2025. | DOI: 10.1097/QCO.0000000000001081
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