Adolescents Living With or at Risk for HIV: A Pooled Descriptive Analysis of Studies From the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions

Purpose: This study aims to describe the cohort of Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/ AIDS Interventions (ATN) research program participants and evaluate whether the ATN's recently completed 5-year cycle recruited study participants who parallel the populations most impacted by HIV in the United States.Methods: Harmonized measures across ATN studies collected at baseline were aggregated for participants aged 13-24 years. Pooled means and proportions stratified by HIV status (at risk for or living with HIV) were calculated using unweighted averages of study-specific aggregate data. Medians were estimated using a weighted median of medians method. Public use 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveillance data for state-level new HIV diagnoses and HIV prevalence among US youth aged 13-24 years were obtained for use as reference populations for ATN at-risk youth and youth living with HIV (YLWH), respectively.Results: Data from 3,185 youth at-risk for HIV and 542 YLWH were pooled from 21 ATN study phases conducted across the United States. Among ATN studies tailored to at-risk youth, a higher proportion of participants were White and a lower proportion were Black/African American and Hispanic/Latinx compared to youth newly diagnosed with HIV in the United States in 2019. Par-ticipants in ATN studies tailored to YLWH were demographically similar to YLWH in the United States.Discussion: The development of data harmonization guidelines for ATN research activities facili-tated this cross-network pooled analysis. These findings suggest the ATN's YLWH are represen-tative, but that future studies of at-risk youth should prioritize recruitment strategies to enroll more participants from African American and Hispanic/Latinx populations.(c) 2023 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. All rights reserved.