Older Adults Overlooked in HIV Prevention & Treatment Efforts

With 1.1 million individuals in the United States living with HIV, health officials are focusing on ramping up preventive efforts. However, it seems that one population is currently being overlooked in this regard: older adults.

In a recent presentation delivered at the 125th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Mark Brennan-Ing, PhD, director for research and evaluation at ACRIA, a nonprofit HIV/AIDS research organization, stressed that implicit ageism could be a key contributing factor to this negligence.

On a broader scale, ageism can be defined as “prejudice and discrimination against older people based on the belief that aging makes people less attractive, intelligent, sexual, and productive.” Thus, older individuals can experience this explicitly, when they face discrimination in hiring practices, for example, or implicitly, when they are met with biased attitudes and face stigma associated with their age on a societal level.

Although many HIV risk factors are the same for older adults as they are for younger individuals (engaging in sexual intercourse without a condom can put all individuals, regardless of age at increased risk of infection), some age-related factors also come into play. For example, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, older adults who are divorced and begin dating again may not use condoms because they are unaware of the risk of HIV. Furthermore, an older woman who has gone through menopause may not use protection during sexual intercourse because she is no longer concerned that she may become pregnant.

“The lack of perceived HIV risk in late adulthood among older people themselves, as well as providers and society in general, inhibits investment in education, testing, and programmatic responses to address HIV in an aging population,” Dr. Brennan-Ing stressed in his presentation. “Ageism perpetuates the invisibility of older adults, which renders current medical and social service systems unprepared to respond to the needs of people aging with HIV infection.”

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