. As the moderator, you will not submit traditional answers to the discussion board. Instead, you will engage in discussion with your peers from the perspective of a course leader or mentor. The nature of your interactions should be positive and invite further discussion that fosters creativity and expansion of the DNP role. Your responses and posts should be substantive in nature. A substantive post may include a question, sharing insight with scholarly reference, and helping students to interact with one another in creative ways.

HIV Prevalence in the LGBT Population

One of the current needs affecting the LGBT population in the US and across the globe is the prevalence of HIV among the population. Understandably, practices related to the LGBT population have seen an upward trend in HIV incidence. However, the evidence supporting the cause of HIV incidence and how to significantly address it is limited (DiNenno et al., 2018). Consequently, it is imperative to develop a culturally sensitive response plan through individual research to understand HIV in the specific population as applied to care settings and devise a way to address it.

Culturally Sensitive Response Plan

         Several factors are influencing the prevalence of HIV in the LGBT population, especially among gay men and bisexuals. A culturally-sensitive plan is necessary to acquaint with the population and learn how to make an informed decision on screening. Understandably, fear of victimization, need to maintain one’s image and people’s perception, or anticipating negative attitudes may cause a lack of disclosure of a person’s sexual identity or limit one’s openness to their sexual orientation (Schrimshaw et al., 2018). This information provides insight that needs to be explored further through cultural congruence. One-on-one patient conversation with patients and other members of the LGBT population can provide more information on these challenges

           In addition, the provision of care should be tailored to meet clients’ needs, while improving awareness of the importance of HIV screening. The plan is to advocate for health care providers to encourage HIV screening for the LGBT population members during the patient encounter. There are already laid out recommendations by the CDC on how to screen HIV among the LGBT in the US (DiNenno et al., 2017). It is necessary to evaluate how this has impacted the rate of HIV screening for LGBT and how this has impacted HIV prevalence. Specifically, the plan involves increasing public awareness to improve HIV screening through provider-patient education, implementing CDC’s HIV screening recommendations, and evaluating the impact on subsequent HIV screening rates and prevalence. 

Implementation of the Plan

           Now that the plan is set out, the objective would be to reduce HIV prevalence and incidence by promoting behavior change through increased HIV screening among the population. Increasing HIV screening has been established to facilitate lifestyle change and reduced HIV incidence (Shrestha et al., 2020). The core task would be to assume the role of a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) as an educator to guide other health care professionals in providing institutional culturally competent care for HIV patients for the LGBT population. The DNP would take up an educator role guided by enhanced DNP knowledge as well as research to create institutional guidelines for providing care for HIV patients. By utilizing individual and combined research as well as being technology-competent, the DNP can amass a wide range of knowledge regarding the various aspects affecting care delivery for the LGBT, and therefore create guidelines to address care delivery that directly impacts the prevalence of HIV in the population.

Feasibility and Cost-Effectiveness of the Plan

           The viability of the study is first enabled by the abilities of a DNP to conduct scientific research and use research evidence in nursing practice. Besides creating policies and institutional guidelines, the DNP assumes a leadership role in educating other professionals on the best practices and guidelines and observing that they are implemented for the desired patient population. As previously mentioned, the desired goal would be increased HIV screening that ultimately reduces HIV prevalence in the LGBT population. Increasing HIV screening among other preventive mechanisms has been proven to be cost-effective (Bernard et al., 2017; Shrestha et al., 2020). Therefore, the plan is economically feasible and effective for implementation. 

References

Bernard, C. L., Owens, D. K., Goldhaber-Fiebert, J. D., & Brandeau, M. L. (2017). Estimation of the cost-effectiveness of HIV prevention portfolios for

             people who inject drugs in the United States: A model-based analysis. PLoS medicine, 14(5), e1002312.

             https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002312

DiNenno, E. A., Prejean, J., Delaney, K. P., Bowles, K., Martin, T., Tailor, A., Dumitru, G., Mullins, M. M., Hutchinson, A., & Lansky, A. (2018). Evaluating the

             Evidence for More Frequent Than Annual HIV Screening of Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men in the United States: Results

             From a Systematic Review and CDC Expert Consultation. Public health reports (Washington, D.C.: 1974), 133(1), 3–21.

             https://doi.org/10.1177/0033354917738769