I co-authored a letter to the editor that ran in the Star Tribune yesterday regarding the urgent need to modernize HIV prevention efforts. This sparked a handfull of comments on the strib website about how preventable HIV is (just like the flu, which kills ~36k people per year), and how we’re wasting money on AID’s[sic] education because people already know about it.

I continue to hear rumors that newly diagnosed cases of HIV among young men are not abating in 2010, and I continue to not see much of a response from the government regarding this increase. I don’t think anyone has answers about how to solve this problem, and that’s ok. It’s the lack of effort to try to find solutions that really bothers me. Anyway, here’s what ran in the strib:

As Pride weekend arrives once again, we remember the shocking news that came out of last year: The Hennepin County Public Health Clinic identified six new HIV-positive people, five of whom were under 30. This was a number that hadn’t been seen in years.

A few months later, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) issued a startling letter to service providers identifying a large increase in newly diagnosed HIV cases, with a bulk of them in the metro area. MDH then released preliminary 2009 data to much media fanfare.

HIV in men under 25 increased 83 percent in the last year and 300 percent since 2001, to a level not seen since 1986.

The story came and went.

Locally, Hennepin County’s Ryan White Program answered this startling news by organizing just a few sparsely attended youth events.

Its use of this dated and financially wasteful tactic was against the strong and early advice from those of us who work within these affected communities. MDH points to the Internet as a cause of the increase in HIV, yet none of this funding was spent online.

Now we’re back to the same HIV-prevention activities from the past decade; politically safe and of apparent decreasing effectiveness. Yet, with few exceptions, HIV-prevention activities have yet to truly utilize the Internet.

So what’s the impact? In the last five years, 222 young men have been infected with HIV in Minnesota. This is 132 young men beyond our endemic 2001 levels. It translates to $137 million dollars in lifetime medical costs, much of which will be paid for by state and federal programs.

For every $1 spent on HIV prevention, $7 are saved in future medical costs. It is imperative from both a fiscal and humanitarian standpoint that we take immediate action.

Increased funding alone is not going to solve this problem. Rather, we need to support new and innovative ideas, critically reevaluate our current prevention activities, support culturally competent partner services staff and meet youths where they are. That’s something that the governmental leadership in the HIV community has refused to do.

It’s time to talk prevention in the 21st century. It’s time to stop playing politics on the backs of our youth. And it’s time for new leadership.

CURT PRINS AND JOHN SCHROM

Prins is executive director of District 202, a Minneapolis-based organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youths. Schrom is a member of the Minnesota HIV Services Planning Council.