Exploring HIV Disclosure Challenges and Approaches Around the Globe

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Background

This collection is Volume II of the Research Topic Disclosure Within HIV-Affected Families.The previous collection comprised a mix of original research and systematic reviews with data mainly originating from Sub-Saharan Africa, the region where most HIV infected persons reside. The engagement and success of the previous collection shows the ongoing need for information on HIV disclosure, and how to pass the news of an HIV diagnosis to a person with a need to know that information.

Since the previous collection, new literature within the field has reinforced that HIV disclosure remains a difficult process, with parents/caregivers and healthcare professionals remaining challenged with revealing a HIV diagnosis to relevant stakeholders within HIV-affected families. However, published research demonstrates that the misconceptions, barriers, advantages, disadvantages, and social effects of HIV disclosure are well reported and understood. Although approaches and the rate of HIV disclosure have increased steadily over the years, disclosure rates remain lower than what is ideally desired as this remains an important global public health challenge. It is therefore important to draw attention to the changes, challenges, and advancements that occurred throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and to further understand the disclosure process as perinatally infected persons and those diagnosed in the early years of the HIV pandemic have now aged.

Considering these points, this topic aims to build on the previous collection and add to the body of knowledge about HIV disclosure. The topic aims to explore how HIV disclosure approaches, challenges, and training differ and/or align around the globe. Original research, reviews (systematic, meta-analyses, literature), new/updated models/hypothesis of HIV disclosure, perspectives, and opinion manuscripts are welcomed in the following areas, but not limited to:

- Dating and disclosure (e.g., between intimate partners, within the LGBTQ community, serosorting);
- Index person testing and subsequent disclosure across generations in the same family (e.g., perinatally infected individuals’ disclosure to sexual partners and their own children, difference in disclosing to HIV positive versus negative children within the same family);
- Prevalence of and challenges of disclosure among serodiscordant couples onwards to their children;
- Disclosure training for healthcare professionals to enable disclosure (e.g., healthcare professionals’ perspectives in assisting infected persons and/or their significant others, and on informing stakeholders of diagnosis);
- Impact of COVID-19 on methods of disclosure due to reduced healthcare services;
- Innovative advances which ease the disclosure process that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., story books, online counselling, phone apps);
- Disclosure and sociocultural differences among multicenter healthcare providers/settings (e.g., religion, social status, ethnic backgrounds, urban versus rural, multi-country);
- ART adherence, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and disclosure;
- Disclosure and abuse (e.g., physical, mental, sexual);
-Disclosure effects on quality of life, mental health and available peer support;
- Disclosure and cultural issues;
- Prospective/longitudinal programs in diverse settings that assist with disclosure.

Keywords: HIV disclosure, challenges and approaches in HIV disclosure, advancements in HIV disclosure, HIV disclosure and COVID-19

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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