• What’s at stake?
• Who needs to get tested?
• How testing works
• Can I get tested anonymously? Can I test myself?
• NAPWA's testing and counseling guidelines

What’s at stake?

The reasons for getting tested – not just once, but regularly – are the same as the reasons for protecting yourself. You may not like the test’s result, but if you’re positive you need to know it.

You owe it to yourself and those who love and depend on you to get treatment and stay healthy. And you owe it to anyone with whom you may have sex or share drugs, to know your status and know how not to share your virus with them too. You can’t do those things if you don’t know what your status is.

Who needs to get tested?

Everyone who is old enough to be sexually active or do recreational drugs should be tested routinely at regularly scheduled well-patient doctor’s visits. How old is old enough? If your twelve-year-old is old enough to shave, he’s old enough for HIV. If your eleven-year-old is old enough for her first bra, so is she.

It’s especially important for people in high-risk groups to get tested regularly. These include:

• Sexually active younger teenagers;
• Poor women of color;
• Men who have sex with men (MSM);
• People who inject or snort drugs with others;
• Sex workers, including anyone who has to exchange sexual favors for necessities of life; and
• People who live in HIV “hot spots,” sometimes only a few blocks in area, where the HIV infection rate is so high that anyone who is sexually active – no matter how carefully – is at risk.

How testing works

There are two kinds of HIV tests. Whichever kind you take, you should have trained counseling before the test and – even more important – after, especially if the result comes back positive.

One kind tests for HIV antibodies. Your testing site may draw some blood, send it to a lab, and get results back in a couple of weeks. Your site may prefer to use quick-result oral swab testing kits, which can give a result in a few minutes. Remember that it may take three to six months after infection for your body to start making antibodies, so a negative test result may not mean you’re really negative. It may mean you were infected so recently that it doesn’t show up yet on this kind of test.

The other kind tests for viral load – detectable live virus in your blood. A viral load test will detect HIV even if infection is so recent that are making antibodies against it yet. If you think you may have been exposed to HIV very recently, this is the kind of test you need to take. The results aren’t instant – your testing site will draw some blood for a lab, and get results back in a couple of weeks. So, if you think you may have been exposed last night, you want the viral load test today, but you also want to start post-exposure prophylaxis today.

Can I get tested anonymously? Can I test myself?

         Anonymous vs. confidential

In anonymous testing, the testing facility does not record your name or a personal ID number. Anonymous testing is often free and usually comes with good pre-test and after-test counseling. It is not available in every state, however. See Finding Testing to see how to find an anonymous testing site. For more information on why anonymous testing is often best, visit AIDS.org.

In confidential testing, the testing facility keeps a record of you by name, which it can share with others only for some very limited purposes. One of the parties with which they have to share information is your insurance company, for billing purposes. Some insurers have terminated or refused to renew coverage because they saw a medical procedure code (“CPT-4 code”) telling them that they were paying the testing facility for an HIV test you took.

This means that confidential testing may not be completely risk-free for you. So, if confidential testing is your only option, ask the testing facility two things: (1) are they going to bill your insurance company for the test, and (2) if they are, can they use a general-purpose medical procedure code (CPT-4) that doesn’t tell the company that the blood work it’s paying for was an HIV test?

         Testing yourself

Yes, you can test yourself. Many pharmacies carry self-testing kits for home use. Others can special-order one for you. A prescription is not required. The kit will instruct you to prick a finger, put a drop of blood on a small blotter, and send it to a lab for analysis. Results will come back in few weeks.

We don’t recommend self-testing, because you won’t have the benefit of counseling before the test and especially when the results come back, but we recognize that there are times when other options are difficult.

NAPWA's testing and counseling guidelines

Click HERE to read and download NAPWA's guidelines for routine testing and counseling.