Service provision to persons with or at risk for hepatitis C (HCV) has become an important goal for local health departments across the nation. The shared routes of HIV and HCV, the high coinfection rate of HIV/HCV, and the lack of federal or state funding to support HCV programs are reasons for integrating hepatitis C screening and treatment services into existing HIV/AIDS programs. Such an integration of health services conserves resources. This article reviews the development and progress of a county public health department program's integration of HIV/AIDS and HCV services and provides recommendations for other HIV/AIDS programs that might be considering integration of HIV/AIDS and HCV services.
This commentary is a critique of a recent systematic review of the evidence for the use of puberty blockers for youth with gender dysphoria (GD) by Rew et al. (2021). In our view, the review suffers from several methodological oversights including the omission of relevant studies and suboptimal analysis of the quality of the included studies. This has resulted in an incomplete and incorrect assessment of the evidence base for the use of puberty blockers. We find that Rew et al.’s conclusions and clinician recommendations are problematic, especially when discussing suicidality. A key message of the review’s abstract appears to be that puberty blockers administered in childhood reduce adult suicidality. However, the study used for the basis of this conclusion (Turban et al., 2020) did not make a causal claim between puberty blockers and decreased adult suicidality. Rather, it reported a negative association between using puberty blockers and lifetime suicidal ideation. The study design did not allow for determination of causation. Our commentary concludes by demonstrating how the GD medical literature, as it moves from one publication to the next, can overstate the evidence underpinning clinical practice recommendations for youth with GD.
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