Pathways to cardiovascular disease prevention and impact of specialty referral in under-represented racial/ethnic minorities with HIV

The goal of this research is to generate evidence-based recommendations for the management of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in People Living with HIV (PLWH). The overall objectives of this application are to demonstrate the effect of cardiology referral on CVD outcomes in a racially/ethnically diverse cohort of PLWH, and to generate qualitative data with which to develop of a future intervention. Our central hypothesis is that cardiology referral reduces incident CVD events in underrepresented racial/ethnic minority (URM) populations with HIV compared to nonreferral. Our hypothesis has been formulated based on our own work identifying that race and provider specialty impact cardiovascular risk management. The rationale for our research is that, once it is known how URM populations with HIV access cardiology referrals, and the impact on CVD outcomes, an intervention can be appropriately designed resulting in new and innovative approaches to the management of URM PLWH at elevated CVD risk.