At one Department of Motor Vehicles' office in the nation's capital, motorists can get a driver's license, temporary tags and something wholly unrelated to the road: a free HIV test.
In a city with one of the highest percentages of residents living with HIV or AIDS, health officials have spent the last year test-driving the HIV screening program. Since the program began last October, more than 5,000 people have been tested at the DMV site and gotten results while they waited.
Now, officials are expanding the program, offering testing for the first time at an office where Washington residents register for food stamps, Medicaid and other government assistance. On Monday, the first day of the program, 60 people got tested, officials said. As an incentive, they're being offered a $5 gift card to a local grocery store.
"You have to meet people where they are," explained Sheila Brockington, who oversees HIV testing at the DMV office in southeast Washington, the only one of the city's three DMV service centers where it is offered. "You're waiting anyway. You might as well."
The testing project isn't run by the DMV but by a nonprofit group, Family and Medical Counseling Service Inc., which uses an office inside the site. To ensure confidentiality, residents get tested and receive results in the private office, out of earshot of those going about their usual DMV business. The nonprofit got a $250,000 grant to do the testing and secured the support of the city's Health Department and the DMV. Now a second, similar grant is funding expansion.
Government statistics released in June show about 1.1 million Americans were living with the AIDS virus in 2008, and other studies show that about 10 percent to 20 percent of U.S. adults are tested annually. But those involved in HIV/AIDS work recognize that more needs to be done to identify people living with HIV, said Chris Collins, the vice president and director of public policy for amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.
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