UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge

The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed concerns about social and structural factors related to health disparities, including those related to HIV. As a partial response to an urgent need to understand whether elevated risk of COVID-19 disease and mortality among persons living with HIV (PLWH) results from related risk behaviors, a higher burden of comorbidities, and/or social determinants of health, the Lens was created by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge in partnership with the Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center. 

The Lens: HIV Prevalence and COVID-19 Vulnerabilities data-mapping tool (Lens) can help decision-makers, community-based organizations and other stakeholders to access critical neighborhood-level information about the intersection of socio-economic and health vulnerabilities and HIV. The Lens portal also contains information on COVID-19 case rates for counties where such information is available. We hope this information helps guide overstretched public health and health systems in recasting, prioritizing, and improving HIV prevention and treatment services in the time of COVID. 

The authors thank the California Department of Public Health, Office of AIDS for their input. The authors also thank UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge staff and Chhandara Pech for their support. Lastly, we thank Joana Munoz for designing and laying out this report. Funding for this project was provided by the California HIV/AIDS Research Program.