George Washington University Hosting Webinar on HIV Testing and Screening Guidelines

Training series highlights solutions for HIV and COVID-19 screenings in primary care

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) is hosting a free webinar on May 10 to discuss HIV screening guidelines. The webinar is a part of a training series for the Two in One: HIV + COVID Screening and Testing Model, a national medical education program, and will feature Clover Barnes, RN, the senior deputy director of the HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD and TB Administration of Washington D.C.'s Department of Health.

"Informed consent is crucial in HIV testing, as it honors everyone's right to be actively involved in their own healthcare decisions," said Maranda Ward, EdD, MPH, principal investigator of the Two in One Model and assistant professor of clinical research and leadership at GW SMHS. "Clover Barnes will show us how informed consent facilitates trust between patients and clinicians."

The webinar is entitled "We Test Everyone, Unless You Say No: State Level HIV Opt-Out Testing and Screening Guidelines." During the webinar, attendees will learn about the issues surrounding the importance of patients' right to refusal, in addition to informed consent, and will learn about the District of Columbia's opt-out HIV testing and screening guidelines.

The webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, May 10, from 12 – 1 p.m. ET. Anyone can register for the event here. 

This is the fifth webinar in the Two in One Model training series, which utilizes a combined health and racial equity lens to provide primary care practitioners the tools to routinize HIV, PrEP, and COVID vaccine screenings for all patients to better engage in culturally responsive communication with their racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender-minoritized patients. The series will ultimately offer nine live-streamed continuing medical education (CME) lectures as well as an asynchronous CME-bearing module-based training course and PCP toolkit.

This program has been supported by an independent educational grant from Gilead Sciences, Inc. For more information on this research-informed model, visit the Two-in-One website at: twoinone.smhs.gwu.edu.

SOURCE The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences