AEGiS-APPJ: Defining and Implementing a National AIDS Prevention Strategy

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1987. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Defining and Implementing a National AIDS Prevention Strategy

AIDS & Public Policy Journal 2, no. 3 (Summer-Fall 1987): 29-32
Stephen C. Joseph

No other public health crisis in recent history has challenged us on so many fronts and on such a scale as the AIDS epidemic. The connection between aids, drugs, and poverty in New York City means that the epidemic is hitting out minority communities especially hard. Against this background of resource demands, a number of critical public health policy issues have arisen. (1) We must increase massive public health education risk-reduction efforts. (2) We must rapidly and extensively increase voluntary, confidential risk-reduction counseling and HIV antibody testing. (3) We must increase efforts to break the connection between AIDS and substance abuse. (4) We must expand our knowledge base. (5) We must eliminate the false dichotomy between civil liberties and public health. (6) Finally, we must increase coordinated planning, programming, and funding at the federal, state, and local levels. We are not powerless in the face of this epidemic. There is much that we are doing, and much more that we can and will do, to stem the spread of HIV infection. The time has come, however, to center the national debate upon adoption of a national prevention strategy that works. Those of us in a position to influence policy must advance such a strategy against this mounting health problem.
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