Community Interventions and AIDS


Book Description

"This book provides a new, interdisciplinary guide to effective behavioral and social science interventions to prevent HIV/AIDS. It aims to strengthen the fight against HIV/AIDS by improving community resources to respond to the disease and its effects. The book both builds on and goes beyond the individually oriented interventions that have provided the first generation of AIDS prevention programs. It brings together both theoretical and practical contributions written by the most active, influential, and respected scholars in the field of HIV/AIDS behavioral prevention."--BOOK JACKET.




Family and Community Interventions for Children Affected by AIDS


Book Description

This report forms part of a project funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to implement a strategy for the care of orphans and vulnerable children in Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe with a review of the available scientific information on interventions aimed at children, families, households, and communities.




Setting Up Community Health and Development Programmes in Low and Middle Income Settings


Book Description

A majority of people living in rural areas and urban slums worldwide have minimal access to healthcare. Without information about what to give a child with stomach flu, how to relieve the pain of a broken bone, and how to work against increased substance abuse in a village, the whole community suffers. Children, adolescents, adults, and older people are all affected by the lack of what many of us view as basic healthcare, such as vaccination, pain killers, and contraceptives. To improve living conditions and life expectancy, the people in urban slums and rural areas need access to a trained health care worker, and a functioning clinic. Setting up Community Health and Development Programmes in Low and Middle Income Settings illustrates how to start, develop, and maintain a health care programme in poor areas across the world. The focus is on the community, and how people can work together to improve health through sanitation, storage of food, fresh water, and more. Currently, there is a lack of 17 million trained health care workers worldwide. Bridging the gap between medical professionals and people in low income areas, the aim of this book is for a member of the community to receive training and become the health care worker in their village. They will then in turn spread information and set up groups working to improve health. The book also explains in detail how communities can work alongside experts to ensure that practices and processes work effectively to bring the greatest impact. Copiously illustrated and written in easy-to-read English, this practical guide is designed to be extremely user friendly. Ideal for academics, students, programme managers, and health care practitioners in low and middle income settings worldwide, it is an evidence based source full of examples from the field. Setting up Community Health and Development Programmes in Low and Middle Income Settings shows how a community can both identify and solve its own problems, and in that way own its future. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence.




AIDS and Community-Based Drug Intervention Programs


Book Description

Delve into the uncharted territory of the “hidden” drug addict--users who are not in treatment, not incarcerated, and not officially accessible for research purposes through traditional means. AIDS and Community-Based Drug Intervention Programs describes short-term interventions used to reduce the odds that these drug users will get infected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The book explains new methods that are being developed, such as targeted sampling, social network analysis, geomapping, and other amalgams of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, that need to be forged to overcome the challenges of the war against AIDS. The research described in this important book was conducted under the Cooperative Agreement for AIDS Community-Based Outreach/Intervention Research funding mechanism of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Chapters include research on several ethnic groups, including Alaska natives, Puerto Ricans, and Navaho teens. AIDS and Community-Based Drug Treatment Programs, written by experts in the field, is a broad-based treatment of the subject by those who are actually doing the work in the trenches. Authors cover topics such as: the use of goal-oriented counseling and peer support to reduce HIV/AIDS risk quantitative and qualitative methods to assess behavioral change among injection drug users (IDUs) the importance of sampling from hidden populations in research a public health model for reducing AIDS-related risk behavior among IDUs and their sexual partners characteristics of female sexual partners of IDUs strategies used to implement random sampling strategies in the recruitment of out-of-treatment crack and IDUs ethnographic analysis of intravenous drug use analysis of contact tracing strategies employed to combat the AIDS epidemic the use of pile sorts to enhance other tools used by drug prevention programsAIDS and Community-Based Drug Intervention Programs is full of current research and useful information for professionals interested in learning about strategies for conducting HIV/AIDS research among hard-to-reach populations. Substance abuse researchers, treatment professionals, and people involved in AIDS prevention programs, state and county health departments, and criminal justice systems will find much relevant and important information to use in their daily work.




Community Interventions and AIDS


Book Description

As news headlines report staggering numbers of people infected with HIV or AIDS across the globe and as stereotypes of typical AIDS patients become less and less specific to particular sexual orientations and ethnic backgrounds, the AIDS pandemic shows little sign of relenting. AIDS crosses geopolitical and social barriers, and social and behavioral scientists are confronted with the new challenge of developing scientific inquiry and corresponding interventions around participatory, community-based, and community-focused methods. These interventions are increasingly targeting the contextual influences on individual behavior, such as peer groups, social networks and support systems, and community norms. Community-level interventions also draw on local resources and are respectful of sociocultural circumstances and traditions. This book articulates how the social and behavioral sciences can respond to HIV/AIDS. It is written for all who have a stake in AIDS research, stimulating discussion and debate about the natures of community research and intervention broadly across such disciplines as public health, community health education, urban planning, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy of science. The book proposes alternative perspectives on means of ascertaining knowledge about the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the inclusion of community collaboration in interventions.




Field Trials of Health Interventions


Book Description

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Before new interventions are released into disease control programmes, it is essential that they are carefully evaluated in field trials'. These may be complex and expensive undertakings, requiring the follow-up of hundreds, or thousands, of individuals, often for long periods. Descriptions of the detailed procedures and methods used in the trials that have been conducted have rarely been published. A consequence of this, individuals planning such trials have few guidelines available and little access to knowledge accumulated previously, other than their own. In this manual, practical issues in trial design and conduct are discussed fully and in sufficient detail, that Field Trials of Health Interventions may be used as a toolbox' by field investigators. It has been compiled by an international group of over 30 authors with direct experience in the design, conduct, and analysis of field trials in low and middle income countries and is based on their accumulated knowledge and experience. Available as an open access book via Oxford Medicine Online, this new edition is a comprehensive revision, incorporating the new developments that have taken place in recent years with respect to trials, including seven new chapters on subjects ranging from trial governance, and preliminary studies to pilot testing.




Preventing and Mitigating AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa


Book Description

The AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to affect all facets of life throughout the subcontinent. Deaths related to AIDS have driven down the life expectancy rate of residents in Zambia, Kenya, and Uganda with far-reaching implications. This book details the current state of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and what is known about the behaviors that contribute to the transmission of the HIV infection. It lays out what research is needed and what is necessary to design more effective prevention programs.




Investing in Communities Achieves Results


Book Description

Investing in Communities Achieves Results fills an important gap in the global knowledge on community level results and resources related to HIV and AIDS. While communities, in spite of their limited resources, have played a key role in the HIV/AIDS response, their contributions and innovative approaches to prevention, treatment, care, and support have not always been the focus of systematic and rigorous evaluations. To address this deficit, a series of studies-including evaluations in Burkina Faso, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe-were undertaken over a three-year period (early 2009 to early 2012), helping to build a robust pool of evidence on the effects of community-based activities and programs. A unique feature of this multicountry evaluation was the collaboration between two international organizations (the World Bank and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development) and a major civil society network (the U.K. Consortium on AIDS and International Development). Other attributes that contributed to the successful outcome were the sustained consultation process with civil society and stakeholders at the local, national, and global levels, and the collaboration among high-caliber, multi-disciplinary researcher teams. The book's findings are promising. At varying levels, depending on the country context, the HIV response in communities was shown to improve knowledge and behavior and increase the use of health services- and even decrease HIV incidence. Evidence on social transformation was more mixed, with community groups found to be effective only in some settings. Each study in the evaluation provides a partial view of how communities shape the local response; however, taken together they constitute a significant pool of rigorous evidence on the contributions of communities, community groups, and civil society to the national and global HIV and AIDS response. The studies suggest that communities have produced significant results at the local level, which contribute to outcomes at the national level.




Best Evidence Structural Interventions for HIV Prevention


Book Description

​​​​ ​ Providing detailed information on structural HIV prevention interventions, this book is intended for health care practitioners and researchers to plan, implement, and evaluate such interventions in their own communities. As defined by the CDC, structural interventions focus on the physical, social, cultural, political, economic, legal, and/or policy aspects of the environment. Designed to reach a large number of individuals, structural interventions usually occur across entire communities, cities, or countries. As a result, the resources required to initiate structural interventions can far exceed those required for smaller-scale behavioral programs. However, changes from structural interventions have the potential to last over time, even after the programs have ended, resulting in effective use of public and private prevention resources.​ Because the reach of structural interventions is typically larger than that of individual- or group-focused interventions (for example, the 100% Condom Use Program, which was implemented countrywide in Thailand), their influence may be equally—if not more—significant.This book is a resource for health practitioners, educators, and researchers who seek HIV/AIDS structural prevention programs that have been shown to be effective in their regions or for their target populations (e.g. injection drug users, commercial sex workers, or the general public). With extensive case studies, the book classifies interventions according to the desired outcomes (specific behavior or policy changes) so that the reader may focus on examples of programs with similar goals and target populations to their own. Addresses the quintessential public health ethical dilemma regarding which types of environmental changes should be mandatory via legislation and which should be voluntary, promoted via programmatic, practice, and policy change. ​




Evaluating HIV Prevention Interventions


Book Description

This user-friendly, comprehensive guide places evaluation in the context of HIV to give all health care professionals the necessary tools for developing and implementing successful HIV interventions. Every aspect of evaluation is discussed, including: the social and political context of evaluation coding and inter-rater reliability procedures barriers to evaluation and solution the dissemination of results the application of theory to HIV interventions. Case studies and examples from both the US and abroad to illustrate practical issues, and numerous tables and figures complement the text.