A leading medical group now advises OB-GYNs to “proactively” discuss and prescribe HIV prevention drugs with their patients. “You could have one partner,” said a doctor who helped author the guidance. “But all it takes is that one partner.”

More than 38,000 people in the United States were diagnosed with new HIV infections in 2024, the most recent estimates available, and some 20 percent of them are women. The nation’s leading professional organization for OB-GYNs wants to get both those numbers down.

New medical recommendations from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, issued in August 2026, advise providers to “proactively initiate discussions” about HIV testing and prevention with their patients and prescribe preventive medications to any patient who requests it. Previous guidance emphasized discussing risk and prevention with patients identified as having high HIV risk.

Available as pills and injectables, pre-exposure prophylaxis—or PrEP—reduces a person’s risk of getting HIV by up to 99 percent. States with higher rates of PrEP use saw a 38 percent decrease in new HIV diagnoses over a ten-year period. But estimates suggest only about 5-9 percent of PrEP users are women. 

“PrEP use is still very poor amongst women, and when we think about who’s getting HIV in terms of [U.S.] women, it’s Black women,” Dr. Jenell Coleman, one of the authors of the new recommendations, said in an interview with Rewire News Group. “And Black women are the least........

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