Overall Estimate of People Living With HIV in the U.S. Grows: 21 Percent, Mostly Minorities, Undiagnosed

An Interview With Michael Campsmith, D.D.S., M.P.H.By Bonnie Goldman


My name is Michael Campsmith, and I'm an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] in Atlanta. My group is the HIV incidence and case surveillance branch. I'm presenting at the CROI conference on an analysis of the prevalence of HIV in the United States at the end of 2006, and we're focusing on the percent of persons who are undiagnosed -- who have HIV infection but are undiagnosed.1

If we don't know they're diagnosed, what's the process the CDC uses to arrive at these numbers?

All areas [in the U.S.] are funded to collect surveillance data. They do that at the local level and send that data without personal identifiers to the CDC. We compile national data, and then there's a statistical modeling procedure.
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