Dr. Robyn Neblett Fanfair

Dr. Robyn Neblett Fanfair, M.D., MPH and a captain in the United States Public Heath Service Commissioned Corps, was named last month after having led the department as acting director since August of 2022. She is the first woman to hold that title

As the CDC prepares to recognize National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on March 10, Dr. Neblett Fanfair said in an emailed press release that she “recognize(s) the need the address systemic factors and long-standing inequities that continue to contribute to persistent health disparities in HIV among women.

“I am committed,” she added, “to DHP leading equitable research, programs and policies to end the HIV epidemic among women.”

Dr. Neblett Fanfair pointed out that the number of estimated new infections among women in the U.S. decreased from 6,800 in 2017 to 6,200 in 2021. Those numbers, she said are “moving in the right director,” but “More work remains to address significant disparities, specifically the disproportionate impact of HIV on Black women and transgender women.”

The doctor said that of the 6,200 estimated new HIV infections among women in 2021, Black women accounted for 52 percent or about 3,200.  Among trans women tested and interviewed in seven U.S. cities between 2019 and 2020, 42 percent had HIV. Of those who were trans and Black, 62 percent had HIV, while 35 percent of Hispanic/Latina trans women had the virus.

These numbers, Neblett Fanfair said, “reflect the need for innovative, focused engagement with HIV prevention, testing and treatment efforts for women. But preliminary data from 2022 indicate that only 15 percent of women in the U.S. who could benefit from PreP were actually prescribed PrEP.

Neblett Fanfair said the CDC has a number of programs focused on improving access to PrEP for women, including the Let’s Stop HIV Together campaign which has a focused initiative for women in English and Spanish called She’s Well: PrEP for Women (SanaYPoderosa: La PrEP para as Mujeres). There is also a one-on-one, woman-to-woman clinic-based CDC-supported intervention, Sister-to-Sister: Take Control of Your Heath in which “a provider offers their patient the knowledge and skills they need to reduce their chances of getting HIV,” the doctors said.

She added that CDC is also funding a program called HerPrEP, a research study that “aims to identify, select and adapt strategies for engaging Black women in PrEP care and identify key barriers and facilitators to increasing these PrEP implementation strategies among Black women.”

Another initiative, Transgender Women Involved in Strategies for Transformation — or TWIST — is a “CDC-supported intervention written by transgender women for transgender women” that “aims to increase sexual health knowledge, build self-efficacy to make decisions based on personal values and goals, and strengthen their social support networks,” Neblett Fanfair said.  And CDC’s TRANSCEND demonstration project is finding clinics providing services to trans people in collaboration with community-based organizations to develop and evaluate community-to-clinic models for whole-person approaches to HIV prevention and care services, gender-affirming services including hormone therapy, and primary health care.

For more information and to find resources, visit CDC’s  Let’s Stop HIV Together campaign, the national campaign of both the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. initiative and the National HIV.AIDS Strategy.

Find resources to support the CDC’s efforts to make HIV testing free and accessible to those disproportionately affected by HIV at Together: Take Me Home.

— Tammye Nash