1st Edition

AIDS, Behavior, and Culture Understanding Evidence-Based Prevention

    300 Pages
    by Routledge

    300 Pages
    by Routledge

    AIDS, Behavior, and Culture presents a bold challenge to the prevailing wisdom of “the global AIDS industry” and offers an alternative framework for understanding what works in HIV prevention. Arguing for a behavior-based approach, Green and Ruark make the case that the most effective programs are those that encourage fundamental behavioral changes such as abstinence, delay of sex, faithfulness, and cessation of injection drug use. Successful programs are locally based, low cost, low tech, innovative, and built on existing cultural structures. In contrast, they argue that anthropologists and public health practitioners focus on counseling, testing, condoms, and treatment, and impose their Western values, culture, and political ideologies in an attempt to “liberate” non-Western people from sexual repression and homophobia. This provocative book is essential reading for anyone working in HIV/AIDS prevention, and a stimulating introduction to the key controversies and approaches in global health and medical anthropology for students and general readers.

    Introduction; 1: An Anthropological Approach to AIDS Prevention; 2: Sex, Culture, and Disease; 3: How the Global AIDS Response Went Wrong; 4: Refocusing HIV Prevention on Primary Prevention; 5: Primary Prevention in Concentrated Epidemics; 6: Facts and Myths about HIV Prevention in Generalized Epidemics; 7: Primary Behavior Change and HIV Decline; 8: HIV Prevention and Structural Factors; 9: Gender, Marriage, and HIV; 10: An Endogenous Response to AIDS; 11: Where to from Here?

    Biography

    Edward C Green, Allison Herling Ruark