AEGiS-APPJ: Why the U.S. Needs a National Policy on Condoms

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Why the U.S. Needs a National Policy on Condoms

AIDS & Public Policy Journal 12, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 128-35
D.A. Cohen, T.A. Farley, and S. Bugg

The Global Program on AIDS (GPA) lists the distribution and social marketing of condoms as key components of any national program to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. (Social marketing uses marketing and advertising techniques to promote the use of healthy behaviors.) The GPA cites two key elements that should be regularly evaluated. The first element is the availability of condoms centrally (that is, the number of condoms available for distribution per year, per person aged 15 to 49). The second element is the percentage of people who can acquire a condom (assessed by determining whether condoms have been available for the past 12 months in an uninterrupted supply at a variety of outlets, including health clinics, shops, pharmacies, bars, and hotels). These measures can be used to identify the availability of condoms and their distribution, important as markers in tracking how individuals make positive changes toward safer sexual behavior.
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