Chapter 2 gets down to the nuts and bolts: How do you begin to develop an HIV/AIDS epidemiologic profile? How do you determine the scope, content, and organization of the profile? What skills are required to prepare it? What data do you include? Where can you find those data? Once you get the data, how should you analyze and interpret them? Where can you get help? How do you address differences between prevention and care guidelines and differences such as service area boundaries, time frames, and due dates?

This chapter provides guidance for answering these questions. Of particular importance are the basic concepts and recommended methods for analyzing the profile data.

Establishing the foundation, presented in this chapter, is critical for developing consistent profiles that meet the specific needs of prevention and care planning groups.

Note. In this document, the term HIV/AIDS is used to refer to three categories of cases: (1) new diagnoses of HIV infection only, (2) new diagnoses of HIV infection with later diagnoses of AIDS, and (3) concurrent diagnoses of HIV infection and AIDS.

Go to Chapter 2, Section 1