Evaluating the sensitivity of jurisdictional heterogeneity and jurisdictional mixing in national level HIV prevention analyses: context of the U.S. ending the HIV epidemic plan

BACKGROUND: The U.S. Ending the HIV epidemic (EHE) plan aims to reduce annual HIV incidence by 90% by 2030, by first focusing interventions on 57 regions (EHE jurisdictions) that contributed to more than 50% of annual HIV diagnoses. Mathematical models that project HIV incidence evaluate the impact of interventions and inform intervention decisions. However, current models are either national level, which do not consider jurisdictional heterogeneity, or independent jurisdiction-specific, which do not consider cross jurisdictional interactions. Data suggests that a significant proportion of persons have sexual partnerships outside their own jurisdiction. However, the sensitivity of these jurisdictional interactions on model outcomes and intervention decisions hasn’t been studied. METHODS: We developed an ordinary differential equations based compartmental model to generate national-level projections of HIV in the U.S., through dynamic simulations of 96 epidemiological sub-models representing 54 EHE and 42 non-EHE jurisdictions. A Bernoulli equation modeled HIV-transmissions using a mixing matrix to simulate sexual partnerships within and outside jurisdictions. To evaluate sensitivity of jurisdictional interactions on model outputs, we analyzed 16 scenarios, combinations of a) proportion of sexual partnerships mixing outside jurisdiction: no-mixing, low-level-mixing-within-state, high-level-mixing-within-state, or high-level-mixing-within-and-outside-state; b) jurisdictional heterogeneity in care and demographics: homogenous or heterogeneous; and c) intervention assumptions for 2019–2030: baseline or EHE-plan (diagnose, treat, and prevent). RESULTS: Change in incidence in mixing compared to no-mixing scenarios varied by EHE and non-EHE jurisdictions and aggregation-level. When assuming jurisdictional heterogeneity and baseline-intervention, the change in aggregated incidence ranged from − 2 to 0% for EHE and 5 to 21% for non-EHE, but within each jurisdiction it ranged from − 31 to 46% for EHE and − 18 to 109% for non-EHE. Thus, incidence estimates were sensitive to jurisdictional mixing more at the jurisdictional level. As a result, jurisdiction-specific HIV-testing intervals inferred from the model to achieve the EHE-plan were also sensitive, e.g., when no-mixing scenarios suggested testing every 1 year (or 3 years), the three mixing-levels suggested testing every 0.8 to 1.2 years, 0.6 to 1.5 years, and 0.6 to 1.5 years, respectively (or 2.6 to 3.5 years, 2 to 4.8 years, and 2.2 to 4.1 years, respectively). Similar patterns were observed when assuming jurisdictional homogeneity, however, change in incidence in mixing compared to no-mixing scenarios were high even in aggregated incidence. CONCLUSIONS: Accounting jurisdictional mixing and heterogeneity could improve model-based analyses. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12874-022-01756-w.