Initiation of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis in adolescents and young adults: Barriers and opportunities.

Background: Adolescents and young adults (AYA) ages 13 to 24 years comprise a quarter of the new HIV diagnoses in the United States. Lack of access to HIV-preventive biomedical tools such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reduces opportunities to prevent HIV infection in this population. Initiating PrEP in AYA significantly reduces the negative health outcomes of HIV, but many providers are still reluctant to initiate PrEP in their AYA patients based on perceived threats and barriers.