Provider perceptions of key barriers to providing state-of-the-art clinical care for HIV-infected African-American patients.
U.S. AIDS rates have declined among same population groups; however, African-Americans and other ethnic minorities have experienced the least amount of decline. As a result medical and public health authorities are tasked with developing strategies to help eliminate the disparity in HIV/AIDS incidence rate and clinical outcomes. Thus, in 1999, the National Minority AIDS Education and Training Center (NMAETC) was developed to facilitate training, clinical consultation and technical assistance to clinicians that provide care to HIV-infected minority patients. Its initial activities were designed solely to increase providers' clinical capacity to use state-of-art anti-retroviral therapies to treat and manage the disease. However, through focused discussions with target providers and a survey of medical care service sites, the NMAETC confirms that provider' training and assistance needs extend into non-medical domains.