Refining United States Sexual Minority Adult Population Estimates with the Inclusion of "Something Else" and "Don't Know" Survey Responses.

Purpose: To refine estimates of the U.S. sexual minority population, we sought to characterize trends in the odds of respondents selecting "something else" or "don't know" when asked about sexual orientation on the National Health Interview Survey and to reclassify those respondents likely to be sexual minority adults. Methods: Logistic regression was conducted to test whether the odds of selecting "something else" or "don't know" increased over time. A previously established analytic approach was used to identify sexual minority adults among these respondents. Results: Between 2013 and 2018, the percentage of respondents selecting "something else" or "don't know" increased 2.7-fold, from 0.54% to 1.44%. Reclassifying respondents with >50% predicted probabilities of being sexual minorities increased sexual minority population estimates by as much as 20.2%. Conclusion: A growing proportion of adults are selecting "something else" or "don't know." Properly classifying these responses yields more accurate sexual minority population estimates.

Utilizing Laboratory Results to Identify Emergency Department Patients with Indications for HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis.

People newly diagnosed with HIV often have previous contact with health care professionals, often on multiple occasions, including within emergency departments (EDs). Although EDs have become vital partners in routine screening and linkage to care for persons with HIV, ED engagement in HIV prevention efforts, to include HIV risk assessment and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) referral, are rare. In this study, we electronically queried the hospital electronic health record (EHR) for ED encounters in 2019 and 2020 for patients who screened negative for HIV (N = 26,914) to identify objective evidence of HIV acquisition risk due to recent sexual behavior (sexually transmitted infection screen positive for chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, or trichomoniasis) or recent injection drug practices (urine drug screen positive for heroin, amphetamines, cocaine, or other opiates). In the reviewed period, we identified 1324 patients (4.92%) at sufficient risk to warrant PrEP referral (i.e., PrEP indications), including 304 (22.96%) due to sexual behavior and 1032 (77.95%) due to potential injection drug use. Notably, among adults with PrEP indications regardless of transmission risk group, persons who inject drugs (PWID) represented a significantly larger proportion within our ED cohort as compared with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates for the US population (77.95% vs. 6.34%, p < 0.0001). Among adults with PrEP indications due to sexual behavior specifically, women represented a significantly larger proportion within our ED cohort as compared with estimates for the US population (62.17% vs. 16.48%, p < 0.0001). Our results demonstrate that utilizing laboratory results within the EHR may be a simple low-resource option for identifying and engaging PrEP candidates, especially women and PWID.