A guideline for raising awareness of trauma in primary health care settings has been released by a partnership between the University of California, San Francisco and the Positive Women’s Network-USA, according to a PWN-USA press release.

“Trauma-informed care is the missing ingredient to engage women with HIV in care successfully and to ensure good health outcomes,” said PWN-USA executive director Naina Khanna in the press release. The new model of care is presented in a paper co-authored by Khanna and published in Women’s Health Issues.

Understanding the link between trauma and overall health is “an epiphany for clinicians,” said the paper’s lead author, Edward L. Machtinger, MD, director of the Women’s HIV Program at USCF.

The failure to heal from current or past trauma helps explain why only 70 percent of HIV-positive women are linked to care and less than half remain connected in care.