This first extensive study of the practice of blood transfusion in Africa traces the history of one of the most important therapies in modern medicine from the period of colonial rule to independence and the AIDS epidemic. The introduction of transfusion held great promise for improving health, but like most new medical practices, transfusion needed to be adapted to the needs of sub-Saharan Africa, for which there was no analogous treatment in traditional African medicine.
This otherwise beneficent medical procedure also created a "royal road" for microorganisms, and thus played a central part in the emergence of human immune viruses in epidemic form. As with more developed health care systems, blood transfusion practices in sub-Saharan Africa were incapable of detecting the emergence of HIV. As a result, given the wide use of transfusion, it became an important pathway for the initial spread of AIDS. Yet African health officials were not without means to understand and respond to the new danger, thanks to forty years of experience and a framework of appreciating long-standing health risks. The response to this risk, detailed in this book, yields important insight into the history of epidemics and HIV/AIDS.
Drawing on research from colonial-era governments, European Red Cross societies, independent African governments, and directly from health officers themselves, this book is the only historical study of the practice of blood transfusion in Africa.

Looking back over the course of the three-plus decades of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, scholars and researchers have made many significant strides in understanding and responding to HIV and AIDS. From the inception of the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, when highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) was introduced as an innovative and highly-effective way of controlling HIV and HIV-related diseases, the "average" person diagnosed as being HIV-positive could expect to live for several months and if lucky, for a few years. Today, with the medical advances that have been made in the fight against HIV/AIDS, people who have contracted HIV usually can expect to live relatively healthy lives, in most instances for many years without experiencing any serious complications of HIV disease. This book focuses on the social science aspects of current HIV research.

Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, many bizarre and dangerous hypotheses have been advanced as to the origins of the disease. In this compelling book, Nicoli Nattrass explores the social and political factors prolonging the erroneous belief that the American government manufactured the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to be used as a biological weapon, as well as the myth’s consequences for behavior, especially within African American and black South African communities.

Contemporary AIDS denialism, the belief that HIV is harmless and that antiretroviral drugs are the true cause of AIDS, is a more insidious AIDS conspiracy theory. Advocates of this position make a “conspiratorial move” against HIV science by implying its methods cannot be trusted, and that untested, alternative therapies are safer than antiretrovirals. These claims are genuinely life-threatening, as tragically demonstrated in South Africa when the delay of antiretroviral treatment resulted in nearly 333,000 AIDS deaths and 180,000 HIV infections thatcould have been prevented – a tragedy of stunning proportion.

Nattrass identifies four symbolically powerful figures ensuring the lifespan of AIDS denialism: the hero scientist (dissident scientists who lend credibility to the movement), the cultropreneur (alternative therapists who exploit the conspiratorial move as a marketing mechanism), the living icon (individuals who claim to be living proof of AIDS denialism’s legitimacy), and the praise-singer (journalists who broadcast movement messages to the public). Nattrass describes how pro-science activists have fought back by deploying empirical evidence and political credibility to resist AIDS conspiracy theories, which is part of the crucial project to defend evidence-based medicine.

This publication is a multi-authored investigation into HIV reporting in South Africa, and combines journalism with research to present an analysis that is at once broad in its scope and focused on the important issues. What is left unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV epidemic is a collection of work produced by the fellows of the HIV/AIDS & the Media Project, started by Helen Struthers and Anton Harber in 2003. It contains a selection of the best journalism and research produced by the Media Project Fellows, which gives an important insight into the history and key issues of South African health politics and media reporting on HIV in the last decade. The texts range from in-depth quantitative and qualitative research documents to radio and television transcripts and candid interviews. The title's first section contains research and news reporting reflecting on how the media has reported HIV-related issues, while the second section consists of reporting on pertinent aspects of HIV: stigma, denial, disclosure; PMTCT; orphans and vulnerable children; abstinence and faithfulness; and traditional healers. Each half informs and elucidates the other and works to, as journalism should, shine a light on one the world's most pressing concerns, both at the grassroots and higher levels, and give a voice to those whose voices are often not heard against the din of political controversy that surrounds HIV.

The Republic of Therapy tells the story of the global response to the HIV epidemic from the perspective of community organizers, activists, and people living with HIV in West Africa. Drawing on his experiences as a physician and anthropologist in Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire, Vinh-Kim Nguyen focuses on the period between 1994, when effective antiretroviral treatments for HIV were discovered, and 2000, when the global health community acknowledged a right to treatment, making the drugs more available. During the intervening years, when antiretrovirals were scarce in Africa, triage decisions were made determining who would receive lifesaving treatment. Nguyen explains how those decisions altered social relations in West Africa. In 1994, anxious to "break the silence" and "put a face to the epidemic," international agencies unwittingly created a market in which stories about being HIV positive could be bartered for access to limited medical resources. Being able to talk about oneself became a matter of life or death. Tracing the cultural and political logic of triage back to colonial classification systems, Nguyen shows how it persists in contemporary attempts to design, fund, and implement mass treatment programs in the developing world. He argues that as an enactment of decisions about who may live, triage constitutes a partial, mobile form of sovereignty: what might be called therapeutic sovereignty.

The fight against HIV/AIDS is, above all, an economic issue. The scale of the pandemic and the lack of funds needed to eradicate it require identifying key issues in field interventions and optimal economic policies to fund them. In developing countries, where the epidemic is reaching its peak, the magnitude of governmental and international interventions triggers major crowding-out effects on every other economic decision of those countries, and thus HIV/AIDS affects every aspect of social life. Economic policies alleviating crowding-out effects are thus paramount to foster the economic growth of developing countries and, in turn, their future welfare. Economic issues in the fight against HIV/AIDS are also a primary concern for developed countries, in charge not only of subsidising current treatment campaigns domestically but also of funding R&D in innovative treatments. Designing optimal incentives for public and private agencies to reduce the costs of available medicines, and to develop innovative treatments such as a therapeutic vaccine, is as important as drug delivery or any other field campaign to eventually eradicate the disease. Over two decades of practical implementation of economic policies and academic research have shown many pitfalls in current policies, and they have made it possible to identify previously missed issues. This book shall provide a recent and comprehensive coverage of those policies, and it shall analyse their economic efficiency as well as ways of improvement using state-of-the-art academic findings in Economics and Finance. The authors discuss in detail and provide new economic analyses on the following issues: The nation-wide and international economic consequences of the spread of the disease; Market incentives and disincentives to produce and to develop treatment technologies; The nature and optimality of economic policies devoted to fighting the disease in developing countries, as well as the enhancement of current policies through financial innovations.

Changing the course of AIDS is an in-depth evaluation of a new and exciting way to create the kind of much-needed behavioral change that could affect the course of the global health crisis of HIV/AIDS. This case study from the South African HIV/AIDS epidemic demonstrates that regular workers serving as peer educators can be as - or even more - effective agents of behavioral change than experts who lecture about the facts and so-called appropriate health care behavior. After spending six years researching the response of large South African companies to the epidemic that is decimating their workforce as well as South African communities, David Dickinson describes the promise of this grassroots intervention - workers educating one another in the workplace and community - and the limitations of traditional top-down strategies. Dickinson's book takes us right into the South African workplace to show how effective and yet enormously complex peer education really is. We see what it means when workers directly tackle the kinds of sexual, gender, religious, ethnic, and broader social and political taboos that make behavior change so difficult, particularly when that behavior involves sex and sexuality. Dickinson's findings show that people who are not officially health care experts or even health care workers can be skilled and effective educators. In this book we see why peer education has so much to offer grappling with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and why those interested in changing behaviors to ameliorate other health problems such as obesity, alcoholism, and substance abuse have so much to learn from the South African example.

Changing the Course of AIDS is an in-depth evaluation of a new and exciting way to create the kind of much-needed behavioral change that could affect the course of the global health crisis of HIV/AIDS. This case study from the South African HIV/AIDS epidemic demonstrates that regular workers serving as peer educators can be as or even more effective agents of behavioral change than experts who lecture about the facts and so-called appropriate health care behavior.

After spending six years researching the response of large South African companies to the epidemic that is decimating their workforce as well as South African communities, David Dickinson describes the promise of this grassroots intervention workers educating one another in the workplace and community and the limitations of traditional top-down strategies. Dickinson's book takes us right into the South African workplace to show how effective and yet enormously complex peer education really is. We see what it means when workers directly tackle the kinds of sexual, gender, religious, ethnic, and broader social and political taboos that make behavior change so difficult, particularly when that behavior involves sex and sexuality.

Dickinson's findings show that people who are not officially health care experts or even health care workers can be skilled and effective educators. In this book we see why peer education has so much to offer societies grappling with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and why those interested in changing behaviors to ameliorate other health problems like obesity, alcoholism, and substance abuse have so much to learn from the South African example."

"Represents a long-overdue examination of anthropology's role in the fight against AIDS, bringing together the anthropological perspective and the problem of AIDS like no other."--Brian Joseph Gilley, University of Vermont Until now, there has been no one text that discusses the norms, beliefs, and behaviors that affect how societies respond to HIV/AIDS around the world. The Anthropology of AIDS synthesizes data from anthropology, psychology, sociology, biology, and medicine, and incorporates the author's more than two decades of work as a medical anthropologist, HIV test counselor, and sex therapist. Designed for use in a range of college courses, this volume combines a solid introduction to the epidemiology of HIV and AIDS with a wealth of material exploring the cross-cultural societal impact of the disease. Patricia Whelehan provides a broad overview of the epidemic since 1981, focusing on current social, cultural, political, and economic factors throughout the world. She brings a relativistic, comparative, and holistic approach to look at HIV/AIDS as both a pandemic and an intercultural health problem. She also explores the ethics and controversies surrounding HIV testing, treatment, and research in the United States and other specific societies, including Thailand, Brazil, and areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Written in a clear, concise, and engaging tone, this timely and necessary text will prove an invaluable resource for instructors and undergraduates across many academic disciplines.

Popular understanding of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa is riddled with contradiction and speculation. This is revealed in HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, which explores the various contexts in which debate about HIV/AIDS takes place and examines how the pandemic is perceived by scholars, religious leaders and traditional healers, among others – in communities in and around South Africa.

Using a social theory lens, the book focuses on not only the cultural and contextual practices, but also the methodological and epistemological orientations around HIV/AIDS in education that shape community and individual interpretations of this disease.

The book avoids a simplistic approach to the pandemic, by exploring the complex and sometimes contradictory spaces in which HIV/AIDS discourses are negotiated, and thus goes some way to present a more hermeneutic profile of the HIV/AIDS problem.

HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa is as much about identity construction as it is about HIV/AIDS. The authors recognise the interrelatedness of sex, sexuality, identity and HIV/AIDS in the shaping of individual and collective identities and have thus gone beyond merely asking questions about what people know.

In Melanesia, rates of HIV infection are among the highest in the Pacific and increasing rapidly, with grave humanitarian, development, and political implications. There is a great need for social research on HIV/AIDS in the region to provide better insights into the sensitive issues surrounding HIV transmission. This collection, the first book on HIV and AIDS in the Pacific region, gathers together stunning and original accounts of the often surprising ways that people make sense of the AIDS epidemic in various parts of Melanesia. The volume addresses substantive issues concerning AIDS and contemporary sexualities, relations of power, and moralities - themes that provide a powerful backdrop for twenty-first century understandings of the tensions between sexuality, religion, and politics in many parts of the world.

Reflecting the current state of research into the communication aspects of HIV/AIDS, this volume explores AIDS-related communication scholarship, moving forward from the 1992 publication AIDS: A Communication Perspective. Editors Timothy Edgar, Seth M. Noar, and Vicki S. Freimuth have developed this up-to-date collection to focus on today's key communication issues in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Chapters herein examine the interplay of the messages individuals receive about AIDS at the public level as well as the messages exchanged between individuals at the interpersonal level. Acknowledging how the face of HIV/AIDS has changed since 1992, the volume promotes the perspective that an understanding of effective communication through both mediated and interpersonal channels is essential to winning the continued battle against AIDS. Issues addressed here include: Social stigma associated with the disease, social support and those living with HIV/AIDS, and the current state of HIV testing Parent-child discussions surrounding HIV/AIDS and safer sexual behavior, and cultural sensitivity relating to developing HIV prevention and sex education programs The effectiveness of health campaigns to impact attitudes, norms, and behavior, as well as the current state of entertainment education and its ability to contribute to HIV prevention News media coverage of HIV/AIDS and the impact of the agenda-setting function on public opinion and policy making Health literacy and its importance to the health and well-being of those undergoing HIV treatment. The role of technological innovations, most notably the Internet, used for both prevention interventions as well as risky behavior The volume also includes exemplars that showcase the diversity of approaches to health communication used to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic. These cases include interpersonal and mass communication mediums; traditional along with new media and technology; research by academics and practitioners; individual as well as community-based approaches; work based in the United States and internationally; and campaigns directed at at-risk, HIV- positive, as well as general populations. With new topics, new contributors, and a broadened scope, this book goes beyond a revision of the 1992 volume to reflect the current state of communication research on HIV/AIDS across key contexts. It is designed for academics, researchers, practitioners, and students in health communication, health psychology, and other areas of AIDS research. As a unique examination of communication research, it makes an indelible contribution to the growing knowledge base of communication approaches to combating HIV/AIDS.

The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), is a disease of the body's immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). AIDS is characterised by the death of CD4 cells (an important part of the body's immune system), which leaves the body vulnerable to life-threatening conditions such as infections and cancers. This book explores how this deadly virus has affected America and high-risk children, and presents reports on different forms of funding provided by the international and United States governments, and the fluctuating rates of AIDS cases.

HIV/AIDS continues to devastate the lives of individuals and families, communities and countries. A growing numbness about HIV/AIDS, however, infects many people. Many fail to recognize that the AIDS epidemic is still getting worse, now spreading rapidly in the world's most populous countries. To help raise and renew consciousness about this threat to the world, Ethics and AIDS: Compassion and Justice in Global Crisis summarizes the basics of the AIDS epidemic and presents key themes insights based on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. This ethical perspective is the result of decades of dialogue among Roman Catholics and other Christians, building on the strengths of the various traditions. This book offers a Christian view, with special emphasis on Roman Catholic thought; many of its ethical insights, however, can be shared by other faith traditions and by all people who desire to respond to the AIDS pandemic.

One in six adults in sub-Saharan Africa will die in their prime of AIDS. It is a stunning cataclysm, plunging life expectancy to pre-modern levels and orphaning millions of children. Yet political trauma does not grip Africa. People living with AIDS are not rioting in the streets or overthrowing governments. In fact, democratic governance is spreading. Contrary to fearful predictions, the social fabric is not being ripped apart by bands of unsocialized orphan children. AIDS and Power explains why social and political life in Africa goes on in a remarkably normal way, and how political leaders have successfully managed the AIDS epidemic so as to overcome any threats to their power. Partly because of pervasive denial, AIDS is not a political priority for electorates, and therefore not for democratic leaders either. AIDS activists have not directly challenged the political order, instead using international networks to promote a rights-based approach to tackling the epidemic. African political systems have proven resilient in the face of AIDS's stresses, and rulers have learned to co-opt international AIDS efforts to their own political ends. In contrast with these successes, African governments and international agencies have a sorry record of tackling the epidemic itself. AIDS and Power concludes without political incentives for HIV prevention, this failure will persist.

Current trends of HIV transmission and prevalence clearly show that the epidemic is fuelled by gender-based vulnerabilities. Close to 60 per cent of adults living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and almost 75 per cent of young people living with HIV in southern Africa are female. It is also clear that issues of gender need to be mainstreamed into attempts to curb the further spread of the epidemic. Research on the gender dimensions of HIV/AIDS needs to be augmented. New and existing research must be integrated into policy. Policy must translate into action, and good practice must inform further policy. All presentations provided a gendered perspective on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Two of the papers provide an in-depth overview of gender mainstreaming and suggest tools for its application within the HIV/AIDS sector. Three papers provide examples from different countries of the application of gender mainstreaming. The title concludes with a summary of lessons learnt from the presentations, and briefly outlines ways of taking these lessons forward.

When Edwin Cameron announced to a stunned local and international media that he - one of South Africa's most prominent citizens - was himself living with the HIV/AIDS virus cutting swathes through the population of the continent, the impact was immediate. In Witness to AIDS, Edwin Cameron's compelling memoir, he grapples with the meaning of HIV/AIDS: for him as he confronts the possibility of his own lingering death, and for all of us in facing up to one of the most desperate challenges of our time. In his intensely personal account of survival, Cameron blends elements of his destitute childhood with his daily duties as a senior judge and international human rights lawyer, while focusing always on the epidemic's central issues : stigma, unjust discrimination, and, most vitally, the life-and-death question of access to treatment. Cameron's remarkable story of his own survival in an epidemic that has cost millions of lives is at once moving and uplifting, sobering and ultimately hopeful. 'This book will be a major contribution by a courageous South African towards that quest for a better life for all.' - Nelson Mandela 'If truth is beauty, this relentlessly brilliant and hopeful book is beautiful. It is a text to live by, if we aspire to the possibility of a better life for all...in a world widely threatened by HIV/Aids.' - Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1991

South Africa has, until now, focused its HIV prevention efforts on youth and adults, and now needs to expand its focus to include children. Much is already known about vertical transmission, which is the dominant mode of HIV transmission among children. However, little investigation has been done into the potential for horizontal transmission of HIV on the population below reproductive age. This report focuses on children aged 2-9 years and, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, presents evidence on the potential for HIV transmission in dental, maternity and paediatric services in public health facilities. A new finding concerns the practise of shared breastfeeding. The study was commissioned and funded by the Nelson Mandela foundation, with additional support from the Free State department of Health and the Nelson Mandela Children's fund.

The need and ability for social health and business professionals to work together has emerged in the form of public-private partnerships (PPP). PPPs exist to combat HIV/AIDS globally, but little comprehensive documentation exists about how and why HIV/AIDS PPP programs were created. In Analysis of Experience, Muhiuddin Haider and Ahila Subramanian examine the landscape and benchmarks of HIV/AIDS PPP programs. Haider and Subramanian's study is one of the first to provide effective protocols, which will ensure quality service in these programs, while giving insight to global health and business professionals engaged in mutually beneficial enterprises.

AIDS is now the leading cause of death in Africa, where twenty-eight million people are HIV-positive, and where some twelve million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. In Zimbabwe, 45 percent of children under the age of five are HIV-positive, and the epidemic has shortened life expectancy by twenty-two years. A fifteen-year-old in Botswana or South Africa has a one-in-two chance of dying of AIDS. AIDS deaths are so widespread in sub-Saharan Africa that small children now play a new game called "Funerals." The Children of Africa Confront AIDS depicts the reality of how African children deal with the AIDS epidemic, and how the discourse of their vulnerability affects acts of coping and courage. A project of the Institute for the African Child at Ohio University, The Children of Africa Confront AIDS cuts across disciplines and issues to focus on the world's most marginalized population group, the children of Africa. Editors Arvind Singhal and Stephen Howard join conversations between humanitarian and political activists and academics, asking, "What shall we do?" Such discourse occurs in African contexts ranging from a social science classroom in Botswana to youth groups in Kenya and Ghana. The authors describe HIV/AIDS in its macro contexts of vulnerable children and the continent's democratization movements and also in its national contexts of civil conflict, rural poverty, youth organizations, and agencies working on the ground. Singhal, Howard, and other contributors draw on compelling personal experience in descriptions of HIV/AIDS interventions for children in difficult circumstances and present thoughtful insights into data gathered from surveys and observations concerning this terrible epidemic.

When an artist dies we face two great losses: the person and the work he did not live to do. This book is a moving collaboration by some of America's most eloquent writers, who supply wry, raging, sorrowful, and buoyant accounts of artist friends and lovers struck down by AIDS. These essayists include Maya Angelou, Alan Gurganus, Brad Gooch, John Berendt, Craig Lucas, Robert Rosenblum, and 18 others. Many of the subjects of the essays were already prominent - James Merrill, Paul Monette, David Wojnarowicz - but many others died young, before they were able to fulfil the promise of their lives and art. ""Loss Within Loss"" spans all of the arts and includes portraits of choreographers, painters, poets, actors, playwrights, sculptors, editors, composers, and architects. This text is published in association with the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, a national organization that preserves art works created by artists living with HIV or lost to AIDS. ""Loss Within Loss"" stands as a reminder of the devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic on the arts community and as a survey of that devastation.

Self-sacrificing mothers and forgiving wives, caretaking lesbians, and vigilant maternal surrogates these "good women" are all familiar figures in the visual and print culture relating to AIDS. In a probing critique of that culture, Katie Hogan demonstrates ways in which literary and popular works use the classic image of the nurturing female to render "queer" AIDS more acceptable, while consigning women to conventional roles and reinforcing the idea that everyone with this disease is somehow suspect.In times of crisis, the figure of the idealized woman who is modest and selfless has repeatedly surfaced in Western culture as a balm and a source of comfort and as a means of mediating controversial issues. Drawing on examples from journalism, medical discourse, fiction, drama, film, television, and documentaries, Hogan describes how texts on AIDS reproduce this historically entrenched paradigm of sacrifice and care, a paradigm that reinforces biases about race and sexuality. Hogan believes that the growing nostalgia for women's traditional roles has deflected attention away from women's own health needs. Throughout her book, she depicts caretaking as a fundamental human obligation, but one that currently falls primarily to those members of society with the least power. Only by rejecting the stereotype of the "good woman," she says, can Americans begin to view caretaking as the responsibility of the entire society."

While there is a growing list of publications devoted to the AIDS epidemic, Africa, with two-thirds of the world's cases, still receives scant attention. This book may change the way we think about AIDS and how it is being addressed in Africa and the rest of the world.
The book draws on first-hand research and in-depth investigations carried out by a team of researchers from Britain, Zambia and Tanzania, and focuses on the gendered aspect of the struggle against AIDS.
The authors study the severity of the epidemic and the threat it poses to the population and society in Tanzania and Zambia. They argue that the success of strategies against the spread of AIDS in Africa rests on their recognition of existing gendered power relations and that this success might be enhanced if the strategies are built on existing organisational skills and practices, especially among women. Their conclusions have repercussions for all countries around the world, and especially the rest of Africa.

eBook available with sample pages: PB:1841420247 EB:0203495292

The purpose of this book is to encourage professionals to become involved in family-oriented services to prevent the spread of HIV and its consequences and to provide examples of strategies for mobilizing family resources in the prevention and adaptation to HIV and AIDS. The members of the NIMH Consortium on Families and HIV/AIDS have prepared these chapters building on their research and practice experience. Together some of the nation?s most capable behavioral prevention and treatment scientists have developed these prevention programs based on sound scientific principles and are currently testing them in rigorous controlled trials in communities across the country. While these interventions have not yet been demonstrated to be effective, they have received rigorous peer review by independent scientists conducted under the auspices of the NIMH, and were considered worthy of research support. This book focuses on populations were HIV infection is now quickly spreading, and yet relatively little is know about family interventions with these populations. The prevention programs address the spectrum of programs to prevent the spread of HIV and its consequences. The HIV prevention programs are intended to promote greater responsibility in general, and thus encourage healthier lifestyles with respect to drug and sexual behavior among family members. Although not exclusively, a large proportion of the programs presented in this book were designed for African American populations and address the Prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS and its consequences. With that caveat, however, it should be noted that these interventions can also be adapted for use with other cultural groups, other chronic diseases, STDs and multiple family configurations.

The purpose of this book is to encourage professionals to become involved in family-oriented services to prevent the spread of HIV and its consequences and to provide examples of strategies for mobilizing family resources in the prevention and adaptation to HIV and AIDS. The members of the NIMH Consortium on Families and HIV/AIDS have prepared these chapters building on their research and practice experience. Together some of the nation?s most capable behavioral prevention and treatment scientists have developed these prevention programs based on sound scientific principles and are currently testing them in rigorous controlled trials in communities across the country. While these interventions have not yet been demonstrated to be effective, they have received rigorous peer review by independent scientists conducted under the auspices of the NIMH, and were considered worthy of research support. This book focuses on populations were HIV infection is now quickly spreading, and yet relatively little is know about family interventions with these populations. The prevention programs address the spectrum of programs to prevent the spread of HIV and its consequences. The HIV prevention programs are intended to promote greater responsibility in general, and thus encourage healthier lifestyles with respect to drug and sexual behavior among family members. Although not exclusively, a large proportion of the programs presented in this book were designed for African American populations and address the Prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS and its consequences. With that caveat, however, it should be noted that these interventions can also be adapted for use with other cultural groups, other chronic diseases, STDs and multiple family configurations.