July - September 2019

"Moving Fourth": A Vision Toward Achieving Healthy Living with HIV Beyond Viral Suppression

Abstract

Since HIV has evolved from being a fatal illness to a chronic condition, this brings new challenges relating to long-term health, as increasing numbers of people living with HIV (PLHIV) navigate their lives beyond viral suppression. This review presents the challenges facing patients and health-care providers managing HIV in Europe today. We highlight the challenges that the evolving landscape in HIV brings, including managing an aging and more diverse population of PLHIV; this requires a shift from managing disease to managing health and may best be achieved by multidisciplinary teams in the long term. We introduce the concept of “health goals for me:” an individualized approach to the management of HIV, and use this as the basis for a proposed framework for assessing health-related quality of life for PLHIV. Our framework comprises a continuous cycle of “ask and measure,” “feedback and discussion,” and “intervention,” based on collaboration between the health-care professional and patient. For improved long-term management of PLHIV, we consider that this framework should become an intrinsic part of HIV care in the future and that the “health goals for me” concept be used as a tool to facilitate healthy living for PLHIV beyond viral suppression.

Keywords:
HIV infections. AIDS. Healthy living with HIV. Health-related quality of life.