AIDS and Community-Based Drug Intervention Programs : Evaluation and Outreach

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.

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 programs
  
  AIDS 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.