Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Jan-Dec:18:2325958219880582.
doi: 10.1177/2325958219880582.

Ethical Challenges of HIV Partner Notification in Prisons

Gabriel J Culbert  1   2 , Valerie A Earnshaw  3 , Judith A Levy  4
Affiliations

Ethical Challenges of HIV Partner Notification in Prisons

Gabriel J Culbert et al. J Int Assoc Provid AIDS Care. 2019 Jan-Dec.

Abstract

Partner services provide a safe and humane way for people living with HIV (PLWH) to alert their sex and/or drug-injecting partners to the possibility of HIV exposure and the need for HIV testing, yet little is known about the ethical challenges of delivering partner services in prisons. In this article, we consider 7 key ethical and methodological questions that should be considered when developing, testing, or implementing partner services in prison settings. These questions relate to the ethics of: (1) mandatory HIV testing, (2) health illiteracy, (3) level of prison staff involvement, (4) protecting confidentiality, (5) minimizing harm, (6) achieving equivalency with community standards of care, and (7) providing HIV prevention and treatment services to index patient and their partners. By assisting PLWH in prison to inform partners with whom they may have shared HIV exposure either before or during incarceration, partner services can help to identify cases of undiagnosed HIV infection for testing and linkage to medical care. The acceptability and effectiveness of a future partner services model for PLWH in prison depends critically on answering these 7 questions to assure the highest ethical standards of research and practice.

Keywords: HIV prevention; contact tracing; criminal justice; partner notification; people in prison; prison.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

    1. Dolan K, Wirtz AL, Moazen B, et al. Global burden of HIV, viral hepatitis, and tuberculosis in prisoners and detainees. Lancet. 2016;388(10049):1089–1102. - PubMed
    1. Hogben M, Behel S. Assisted partner services for HIV case-finding. Lancet HIV. 2017;4(2):e55–e56. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Dalal S, Johnson C, Fonner V, et al. Improving HIV test uptake and case finding with assisted partner notification services. AIDS. 2017;31(13):1867–1876. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Golden MR. Assisted partner services for HIV: ready to go global. AIDS. 2017;31(13):1891–1893. - PMC - PubMed
    1. World Health Organization. Policy Brief: WHO Recommends Assistance for People with HIV to Notify Their Partners. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2016.

Publication types