NEW YORK (AP) – City health officials are considering a campaign to urge circumcision for men at a high risk of contracting HIV after recent international studies found the procedure can dramatically reduce the risk.

But Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday that he was still not sure what role the city should have in the issue, “whether it’s something that the government should be involved in, or just giving advice and making sure that people get educated.”

The city health department has asked some gay rights groups and community organizations to discuss circumcision, removal of the foreskin of the penis, with their members and has approached the agency that runs city hospitals and health clinics about the possibility of offering the procedure for free to uninsured men. However, a spokesperson for the hospital agency, the Health and Hospitals Corporation, said it had not decided.

United Nations health agencies last week recommended circumcision for heterosexual men, after three studies in Africa found that the procedure reduced men’s chances of contracting HIV by up to 60 percent. Circumcision had long been suspected of reducing men’s susceptibility to HIV infection because the cells in the foreskin are especially vulnerable to the virus.

Calling New York City “the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic” in the United States, Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden suggested to The New York Times that circumcision could have promising preventative results in the city, despite differences between the populations at risk in Africa and in New York.

The African studies, conducted in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa, involved men who said they had sex with women. In New York, those at highest risk are men who have sex with men, men who inject drugs and their sexual partners, the Times said.

About 65 percent of all male babies in the United States are circumcised, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Worldwide, about 30 percent of men are circumcised, the World Health Organization estimates.

In New York, black, Hispanic and foreign-born men are less likely to be circumcised than white Americans, Frieden said.