Title: Reassessing priorities: identifying the determinants of HIV transmission [editorial]

POPLINE Document Number: 081247

Source citation:

Social Science and Medicine, 1993 Mar;36(5):iii-viii.

Abstract:

Despite remarkable advances in knowledge of HIV and AIDS, the social context of HIV transmission has been neglected. A few writers have addressed some key issues in the social, historical and cultural content of HIV transmission, such as economic need of women and their use of transactional sex as a survival mechanism, and similar use of transactional sex in some Asian countries by young women, with full family support. Population displacement, troop movements, migrant labor, urban squatter settlements in the developing world, and drug and alcohol use in the developed world, have received minimal attention in research on HIV. It is important to identify and target high-risk situations such as homeless youth for HIV prevention strategies. Women's groups and community-based organizations, trade unions and even the organized gay community are examples of effective empowerment and influence for change in behavior. These institutions are all the more effective because of people's district of official channels such as the government. The focus is the U.S. needs to be changed to minimization of harm, and the language altered to reflect high-risk situations. Well-designed experiments should be mounted to see if an approach like that used by the gay community can be applied to other groups. If such context-specific approaches, focused on high-risk situations, are effective, they should be applied to HIV transmission and to other environmental-social situations such as alcohol and tobacco related disease and accidents.

Keywords:

Developing Countries
Developed Countries
Recommendations
HIV Prevention
HIV Infections
HIV Transmission
Problem Formulation
Risk Factors
Population At Risk
Viral Diseases
Diseases
Research Methodology
Biology