In Women, Drug Use, and HIV Infection, you'll see why AIDS is the fourth leading cause of death among women of childbearing age, and you'll come to understand why it disproportionately affects minority women, many of whom are poor, addicted to drugs, and/or the sexual partners of drug users. You'll gain instantaneous access to the data collected by a national, multi-site Cooperative Agreement funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The quantitative and qualitative studies contained in this publication will familiarize you with the lives of women especially susceptible to HIV infection. You'll also discover descriptions of prevention strategies that will lower the risk of infection in this high-risk population of women. In Women, Drug Use, and HIV Infection, at least two chapters focus on each main topic, giving you a deeper, multilayered look at each issue. Even after a few chapters, you'll find that your understanding of this national societal illness will expand tremendously in these and other areas: cultural contexts of various geographical areas of the United States perceptions of HIV risk among the women who use drugs the difference in risk behaviors of drug-using women in cities of different sizes with different rates of HIV seroprevelance how past and current domestic violence changes the HIV risk behavior of women who are sexual partners of drug users how the trading of sex for drugs and/or money is critical in tracking HIV risk behavior in women Women, Drug Use, and HIV Infection takes its data from a wide variety of U.S. locations and from a wide variety of women and organizes it in a way that you can understand, process, and ultimately turn toward transformative action in your rural or urban area of the country. You'll get the latest in outreach and intervention efforts, and you'll find yourself with more and more recommendations for future prevention.

In developing HIV prevention, community-orientated approaches have emerged within statutory and voluntary sectors and from the communities themselves. This book considers the diverse approaches and problems for professional practice.

Intravenous drug users account for nearly one-third of the current AIDS cases in the United States--second only to gay males--and are responsible for 72 percent of female and 59 percent of pediatric cases of AIDS. Thus the National Institute of Drug Abuse launched a major effort in 1987 to locate hidden users and to see how they function and to evaluate strategies and community-based programs in 50 cities and 60 nearby communities around the country in order to lower risks to IV users and to reduce the dangers that they pose to others in the population. Brown and Beschner present the very latest findings and come to well-tested conclusions about how to change behaviors positively. This handbook is written for use in college, university, and professional libraries and for students, teachers, policymakers, and practitioners in public health service and in public policy at all governmental levels to study carefully. Brown and Beschner open with an introduction showing how injection drug users and their sexual partners are at risk for aids. Part I describes the spread of AIDS in the United States and Puerto Rico. Part II depicts patterns of injection drug and crack use and their effect on sex partners. Part III deals with gender issues. Part IV goes into demographic and background factors. Part V discusses key issues in the use of drug abuse treatment. Part VI analyzes outreach and behavior change strategies. And Part VI looks into how risk can be reduced as a result of outreach and specific intervention strategies. The final chapter comes to some conclusions about the effectiveness of various interventions by the National AIDS Demonstration Research Project. Background readings also add to the importance of this major reference.

AIDS, Drugs and Prevention brings together a range of international contributions on the research, theory and practice of developing community-based HIV prevention. It aims to understand how individual actions to prevent HIV transmission are constrained and encouraged by situational and social context. Drawing on ethnographic and epidemiological research among populations of drug users, sex workers and gay men, it explores how future HIV prevention interventions can target changes at the level of the individual as well as at the level of the community and wider social environment. AIDS, Drugs and Prevention offers practical and theoretical insights into community-based health work in the time of AIDS. It provides invaluable reading for students, lecturers, researchers and practioners in health promotion, health policy, social work and medical sociology.