ISSUE BRIEF: Status Neutral HIV Care and Service Delivery Eliminating Stigma and Reducing Health Disparities

Powerful HIV prevention and treatment tools can keep people healthy and help end the HIV epidemic. Combining these tools in a status neutral approach can help people maintain their best health possible, while also improving outcomes in HIV prevention, diagnosis, care, and treatment. A status neutral approach to HIV-related service delivery aims to deliver high-quality, culturally affirming health care and services at every engagement which supports optimal health for people with and without HIV. This approach is especially important now to reduce the unacceptably high number of annual HIV infections and help close the persistent gaps along the HIV prevention and care continuum, which indicate that not enough people are being engaged or retained in HIV prevention and treatment.