(P76) CHARACTERIZING STI TESTING DISPARITIES BETWEEN ASIAN PWH AND OTHER RACE/ETHNIC SUB-POPULATIONS IN THE DC COHORT DURING PRE- AND POST-PANDEMIC PERIODS

Background:
CDC guidelines recommend annual sexually transmitted infection (STI) screenings for people with HIV (PWH), yet racial disparities in screenings exist. Given the ongoing lack of STI research on Asian PWH, our objectives were to assess differences in STI screening and incidence between Asian and non-Asian PWH and evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on STI screening.

Methods:
The DC Cohort is a longitudinal cohort of PWH in Washington, DC. We evaluated the participants’ annual screening rates and diagnoses for gonorrhea, chlamydia, or syphilis from 2018 to 2023. Pacific Islanders were excluded in this analysis. Logistic regression with repeated measures was used to calculate odds ratios between and non-Asian PWH for each outcome, adjusting for gender, HIV transmission factor, age, HIV care site type, and prior STI.

Results:
We evaluated 10,260 PWH who had at least one year of enrollment in the DC Cohort from 2018 to 2023. Of them, 91 (0.9%) were Asian. There were no differences in receiving annual STI screenings between Asian and non-Asian participants (p = 0.495). However, the number of people meeting screening recommendations remained low (26-30%) from 2020-2023, with a significant yearly decrease (p < 0.0001). Among those screened for an STI, Asian participants were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with syphilis (OR = 2.55, p = 0.015), but this association was not statistically significant after adjusting for covariates (p = 0.076). There were no racial differences in diagnoses of gonorrhea or chlamydia.

Conclusion:
In this cohort of PWH, STI screening decreased during the pandemic and has not recovered since. In contrast to prior findings, we found no screening disparities between Asian and non-Asian PWH, although Asian PWH were significantly more likely to have syphilis. Future interventions on recovering STI screening rates as well as further investigation into racial disparities observed in our study is needed.