Interventions for immigrant Latino men who have sex with men along the HIV prevention and treatment cascade

Key take-home messages

• Among reported HIV cases with a known race/ethnicity in Canada in 2017, 6.3% were among individuals from Latin America. In 2018, Latinx persons in the U.S. were disproportionately affected by HIV, accounting for 27% of HIV diagnoses, despite total Latinx persons representing only 18% of the U.S. population. Also, 2018 data suggests that approximately 67% of the Latinx population diagnosed with HIV in the U.S. were born outside the continental U.S., primarily in Mexico and South America.
• Various factors can lead to increased HIV risk among Latino immigrants including social and geographic isolation, loneliness, disrupted family relationships, and missing family-based or community-based social norms. Barriers to adhering to HIV treatment may include unpleasant side effects, poor communication with providers due to language barriers, financial burden, and limited medication availability during migration periods.
• There are interventions focused on increasing testing and preventive behaviours by providing: culturally appropriate services; biomedical strategies (e.g., awareness of self-testing kits); strategies addressing issues of disclosure of sexual orientation, family rejection, homophobia, poverty, and racism; and peer-to-peer approaches (e.g., “promotores” or “navegantes” programs).
• Literature on increasing linkage and adherence to care includes the use of a transnational framework which incorporates recognizing, acknowledging, and building upon the connections that Latinx use to maintain ties to their place of origin while living abroad.
• A cognitive behaviour therapy group intervention to address coping with discrimination among HIV-positive Latino immigrant sexual minority men found that discrimination is related to medication non-adherence, medication side effects, and HIV/AIDS symptoms.

• Epidemiology and Determinants of Health
  • Epidemiology
• Population(s)
  • Men who have sex with men
  • Ethnoracial communities
  • General HIV+ population
  • General HIV- population
• Engagement and Care Cascade
  • Linkage/engagement in care
  • Retention in care
  • Treatment
• Prevention
  • Sexual risk behaviour
  • Biomedical interventions
  • Education/media campaigns
• Testing
  • Testing