High-risk sexual behavior in Los Angeles: Who receives testing for HIV?

No recent population-based data on HN testing in people with high-risk sexu al behavior are available. We sought predictors of testing using data from the 1997 Los Angeles County Health Survey, a random-digit telephone survey of 8004 county households. An estimated 2.3 million (35.5%) adults were tes ted for HIV in the past 2 years and approximately 370,000 (5.6%) engaged in high-risk sexual behavior (defined as having greater than or equal to 2 pa rtners in the past 12 months and not always using condoms). Among high-risk persons, an estimated 46% of heterosexual men, 56% of heterosexual women, and 72% of men who had sex with men (MSM) were tested for HIV. In a multiva riable model of high-risk people, both heterosexual men (odds ratio [OR], 0 .31; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.16-0.61) and women (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.19-0.87) had significantly lower proportions of testing than MSM. Althoug h African Americans and Hispanics had significantly higher testing proporti ons than whites overall among all county residents, those reporting high-ri sk sexual behavior did not test at higher proportions. We conclude that the proportion of adults with high-risk sexual behavior tested for HIV is high er than almost a decade ago. However, testing among this group remains subo ptimal. Future public health campaigns should intensify efforts to encourag e HIV testing among this population.