Social Determinants of Health Increasing HIV Prevalence Among Men Who Have Sex With Men

This discussion of HIV has been approached with an insubstantial amount of thought about how the infectious disease has affected the GBMSM (gay, bisexual, and men who have sex with men) community. This reality has led to an overall lack of consideration for factors that both directly and indirectly affect this population of men.

If the picture isn’t clear yet, I’ll paint a clearer one now: a lot of work needs to be done and the US needs to step it up.

This article is a summarized piece from a longer report written by the author called A National Brush-Off to MSM and Gay Men Living With or At Risk for Acquiring and Transmitting HIV/AIDS.

Between 2010–2016, the CDC reported that HIV incidence among MSM and gay men remained around 26,000 new infections per year (Centers for Disease Control, 2016). This statistic highlights that policies enacted during this period of time have been inefficient in lowering new HIV infections among MSM and gay men — and not only have these policies been unproductive during this specific time but also in the social atmosphere that we live in our current day.

P.S. Instead of saying “MSM and gay men” like some cited articles use, this article will use the term GBMSM.