In 2006, Millett published a seminal literature review that examined 12 hypotheses to explain the high rates of HIV among black MSM. This paper augments Millett's article by reviewing the recent literature on behavioral, biomedical, structural, social contextual, psychosocial, and social network factors that affect HIV rates among black MSM. We searched three databases: PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar. First we searched all articles that included black or African American and MSM and HIV. We then searched the following terms for each area: behavioral (drug use during sex, crack cocaine use, and serosorting); biomedical (circumcision, STDs, and STIs); structural (access to care, HIV care, ART, HAART, patient-provider communication, HIV quality of care); social contextual (stigma, discrimination, internalized homophobia, internalized heterosexism, medical mistrust, social isolation, and incarceration); psychosocial (peer support and mental health); and social network (sexual mixing, partner characteristics, and social networks) factors. We identified 39 articles to include in this review. We found inconclusive evidence that incarceration, stigma, discrimination, social isolation, mental health disparities, or social networks explain the elevated rates of HIV among black MSM. We found evidence that the differences in rates of HIV between black and white MSM may be explained by differences in STIs, undiagnosed seropositivity, access to care and treatment services, and use of HAART. There is an overwhelming need for HIV testing, linkage to care, retention in care, and adherence programs for black MSM.

BackgroundBlack men who have sex with men (MSM) are disproportionately burdened by HIV/AIDS. Despite this burden there has been a shortage of research on HIV interventions for black MSM. This article provides a comprehensive review of the literature on interventions for black MSM to identify effective HIV prevention intervention strategies for black MSM.MethodsWe searched 3 databases: Pubmed, Scopus, and Google Scholar to identify peer-reviewed articles and used the following search terms: African American or black; MSM or men who have sex with men and women (MSMW); HIV; program or intervention; and evaluation or intervention science or implementation research. We included research articles that assessed interventions for black men who have sex with men. We included studies that used an experimental, quasi-experimental, or pre-post test design as well as formative research studies. We also searched the CDC and NIH websites to identify planned and on-going intervention studies. We identified a total of 23 studies to include in the review.ResultsWe identified 12 completed studies of interventions for black MSM. Eight of these 12 interventions aimed to reduce HIV risk behaviors and 5 found a significant reduction in HIV risk behavior over time. We identified 4 health service intervention studies for young black MSM.ConclusionsBehavior change interventions are effective at reducing HIV risk behaviors among black MSM. However, relying only on behavioral interventions that aim to reduce HIV risk behavior will most likely not have a population-level effect on HIV infection among black MSM. There is a compelling and urgent need to develop and test comprehensive HIV testing, linkage to care, retention in care and adherence interventions for black MSM.

The National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) clearly emphasized the need to provide services to black men who have sex with men (MSM). However, there are no estimates of the unmet HIV-related service delivery needs among black MSM. We estimate that of 195,313 black MSM living with HIV in the US, 50,196 were not yet diagnosed, and 145,118 were aware of their seropositivity (of whom 67,625 were not linked to care and 77,493 were linked to care). Also, of those already diagnosed, ~43,390 had undetectable viral load and 101,728 had detectable viral load. Approximately 19,545 of diagnosed black MSM engage in unprotected risk behavior in serostatus-discordant partnerships. The cost of delivering services needed to meet the NHAS goals is ~$2.475 billion in 2011 U.S. dollars. Mathematical modeling suggests that provisions of these services would avert 6213 HIV infections at an economically favorable cost of $20,032 per quality-adjusted life year saved.

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