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The purpose of this paper is to examine health-related social advertisements to identify its use and evaluate its appropriateness to situational needs, such as epidemic dynamics and the context where it is implemented. The paper also discusses the barriers that policymakers face in creating these linkages.

In all, 375 national HIV/AIDS prevention television advertisements from France, Germany, Portugal and Italy were viewed and analyzed over time of production, exploring the sources, the target audiences and the messages delivered. This paper compares management choices with HIV epidemics in each country and their contextual profiles.

The findings of this paper indicate that social advertising concerned with HIV/AIDS prevention is commonly framed within public policies and does not usually target the most vulnerable and affected populations. Furthermore, social ads are reactive to epidemic dynamics. The existence of trade-offs between putting forward theoretical marketing recommendations and taking account of contextual fracturing issues or increasing stigma and discrimination are also considered.

This paper is useful for public sector management because of the importance of evaluating the investments done to improve future strategies. The discussion about restrictions and concerns for policy-makers is important to improve management decisions.

This paper suggests the adoption of proactive public policies and proposes strategies to overcome the restrictions or concerns faced by policy-makers.

The rates of HIV infection among prisoners in most countries are significantly higher than in the general population. HCV seroprevalence rates are even higher. While most prisoners living with HIV or AIDS and/or HCV contract their infection(s) outside the institutions before imprisonment, there is evidence that the risk of being infected in prison, in particular through sharing of contaminated injecting equipment and through unprotected sex, is great. Outbreaks of HIV infection have been documented in a number of countries. Since the early 1990s, various countries have introduced HIV and, to a lesser extent, HCV prevention programmes in prisons. Part 2 of the select annotated bibliography on HIV/AIDS and HCV in prisons contains selected “essential” articles and reports that provide information about (1) prevalence of HIV, HCV, and risk behaviours in prisons; (2) transmission of HIV and HCV in prisons; and (3) measures aimed at preventing HIV and HCV infection in prisons: education, voluntary testing and counselling, provision of condoms, prevention of rape, sexual violence and coercion and bleach and needle and syringe programmes. Each section also contains a brief review of the evidence, based on recent work undertaken by WHO.

At least 20% of individuals living with HIV pass through prison and jail doors every year, in any nation, worldwide. Therefore, interventions that improve access to HIV testing, HIV care, and education can have a broad impact on public health in every country. The benefits of these interventions in correctional settings have already been well documented. For example, improved access to HIV testing, treatment by an HIV specialist, preventive vaccinations and prophylactic medications, screening for concomitant infections such as HCV, and pre‐release planning services have been shown to decrease HIV‐related mortality and morbidity, to reduce the risk of HIV transmission and to decrease recidivism. Education of at‐risk individuals has also been shown to reduce HIV risk behaviors. Safe distribution of condoms and needle‐exchange programs have also been demonstrated to be safe and effective, although few such programs have been implemented in the United States. While all the available evidence has demonstrated that these public health‐oriented interventions can be and are successful in correctional settings, implementation on a national and international level lags far behind the evidence. The time has come to take an evidence‐based approach to improving HIV management in correctional settings. Implementations of the HIV management interventions described in this article make good medical sense and will have a positive impact on the health of inmates and the communities to which inmates return.

Two research questions are addressed: what are black female college students’ perceptions of current messages present on web sites about HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention?; and what messages do black female college students find culturally relevant to them, and why? Results indicate that these women perceive several communication barriers including lack of trust and unfamiliarity with information sources, stigma ascribed to HIV, as well as misconceptions and traditional values held by some in the black community and health institutions. HIV prevention messages are perceived as relevant if they exhibit qualities including interactive features. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To understand black collegiate women as health information seekers, it is important to engage paradigms that allow researchers to make sense of how group members construct their content needs, what helps shape this construction, and the meaning derived from the consumption of the information, focus groups are an effective qualitative method for enabling collective discussion and interaction between research participants that facilitates the exploration of under-researched topics like HIV prevention as well as the language commonly used by respondents to describe HIV from a socio-cultural perspective. The research team conducted three focus groups to appraise current black female college students’ attitudes and perceptions of messages presented on HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness web sites

HIV prevention messages are perceived as relevant if they exhibit qualities including interactive features, practical advice using non-technical vocabulary, content authored and disseminated by familiar and trustworthy individuals and institutions, and risk related to individual behaviors rather than the demographic group. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research on the design of health information systems are provided.

This research is based on a small sample size based on one region of the USA.

Health communication materials should also provide strategies for dispelling myths, and combating feelings of stigma, and mistrust. In addition, practical advice such as questions to ask physicians may help to produce positive and desirable outcomes as black women seek services from the healthcare system. The message itself must take into account a number of factors include short and simple messages, clean web pages, navigation structures that make information easy to find, comprehensive information all found in a single web site, and interactive features to facilitate discussion and sharing. In particular, with social media, women can also play a role in the creation and dissemination of health messages in multiple modalities including text, spoken word, still and moving images, and music.

“A major component of preventive health practice is the availability and provision of information regarding risks to health and promotional measures for enhancing the health status among this population” (Gollop, 1997, p. 142). However, as Dervin (2005) cautions, while information is necessary, it is insufficient to encourage behavior change. To combat the health disparities that differentially impact African-American women requires expertize and understanding from multiple perspectives. By providing insight into how black collegiate women perceive HIV prevention information needs, the women in the focus groups lend a necessary voice in the effort toward healthy equity through the creation of effective health interventions that will appeal to them.

The author seeks to create an online and socially connected experience characteristic of ongoing user input and active engagement in content development which targets the population. From a human-computer interaction viewpoint, the authors are seeking to avoid design divorced from context and meaning. In developing such an experience, the authors will need to triangulate the roles of culture, context, and design to reduce the content divide, yet amplify the notion of participatory web. Participatory web embodies a social justice movement to build web content from voices typically dampened in the discourse. It (re)shapes meaning, identity, and ecologies in the process of foci on particular social, health, and political causes (e.g. HIV/AIDS). Giving black women ownership over the creation of health information on the internet may improve the ability to provide targeted HIV prevention content that is culturally salient and more effective in reducing HIV infections in this community.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of the national HIV prevention outreach program for men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women (TGW).

It examined changes in condom use, lubricant use, HIV testing and counseling (HTC) uptake and sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening uptake, as well as how and why changes did or did not occur. The study applied mixed methods of both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

There were 16,539 MSM, and TGW reached at least three times in the program during October 2011‒September 2012. The program was found to affect changes in condom use with steady partners (p<0.000), condom use with casual partners (p<0.000), water-based lubricant use (p<0.000), HTC uptake (p<0.000) and STIs screening uptake (p<0.000). Age and province of outreach are associated with HTC uptake and STI screening (p<0.000), slightly as well as gender identity (p<0.1). Gender identity and province of outreach are associated with condom use with steady partners (p<0.000). Gender identity (p<0.000) and sex work (p<0.05) are associated with the use of lubricant. The qualitative results showed that the program had an immediate effect on HTC and STIs screening due to successful bond between the outreach workers and their clients, leading to trust and influencing behavior change.

HIV prevention by peer educators continues to be proved the most effective method, assuming its program consistency. TGW are more vulnerable to MSM to protect themselves, and they have steady partners. Future program for MSM can be replicated and scaled up, but more empowerment component and self-esteem building should be integrated to target TGW.

The background to this paper is the increasing interest in the relationship between housing and municipal services and HIV/AIDS. The purpose of this paper is to clarify what, precisely, one has in mind when thinking that housing and municipal services might prevent HIV infection and associated opportunistic infections. The focus is not on the socioeconomic dimensions but on the modes of transmission associated with specific opportunistic infections. That is, the paper first disputes the relevance of housing and services to HIV prevention, but then demonstrates that housing and municipal services are important for (a) the prevention of certain opportunistic infections to which people affected by HIV/AIDS are particularly vulnerable, and (b) for the provision of home-based care.

In addition to the medical focus of the paper, there is attention to the empirical backdrop on the relation between housing, municipal services and HIV/AIDS, analysing survey findings regarding among whom and where HIV prevalence is highest, and projections regarding the extent of HIV infections and AIDS based on the World Health Organization clinical staging system. Using Johannesburg as a case study, it is demonstrated that the number of persons having AIDS is smaller than one might expect and also that the number is already declining, which has implications for the provision of home-based care. However, it is also shown that the number of households that lost one or several members is increasing rapidly. In this context, labour force surveys are employed to identify the impacts on specific categories of households. At this stage, a defining unknown is the scale, nature and location of these reconstituted households and what this means for housing policy.

Finally, a feature of the research was the extent to which medical practitioners viewed housing as a quixotic sideline within the broader struggle for HIV prevention and the provision of treatment. In sum, the paper provides an argument for incorporating housing and municipal services into both HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment programmes.

Despite HIV being reported as one of the major global health issues, availability and accessibility of HIV services and supplies remain limited, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The effective and efficient operation of HIV supply chains is critical to tackle this problem. The purpose of this paper is to give an introduction to HIV supply chains in low- and middle-income countries and identify research opportunities for the operations research/operations management (OR/OM) community.

First, the authors review a combination of the scientific and grey literature, including both qualitative and quantitative papers, to give an overview of HIV supply chain operations in low- and middle-income countries and the challenges that are faced by organizing such supply chains. The authors then classify and discuss the relevant OR/OM literature based on seven classification criteria: decision level, methodology, type of HIV service modeled, challenges, performance measures, real-life applicability and countries covered. Because research on HIV supply chains in low- and middle-income countries is limited in the OR/OM field, this part also includes papers focusing on HIV supply chain modeling in high-income countries.

The authors conclude this study by identifying several tendencies and gaps and by proposing future research directions for OR/OM research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first literature review addressing this specific topic from an OR/OM perspective.

This study aims to explore peoples cognitive perceptions of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) to inform decisions on message development with regard to message bundling, with limited research on the concept of bundling-related prevention messages and no studies that consider the bundling of HIV and other STD prevention messages.

Individual and small-group interviews were conducted with 158 African American men and women to explore perceptions of STDs and communication preferences. Open-ended questions and a pile-sort exercise were used to elicit individuals’ judgments on similarities of 12 STDs, including HIV. Interview data were coded and analyzed for themes and patterns; pile sort data were analyzed using multidimensional scaling (MDS) and cluster analysis to visualize the set of relations identified from the piles.

STDs and HIV are associated with stigma, risk behaviors and personal responsibility. The card sorting activity revealed two primary dimensions by which people organized STDs: seriousness and curability. Potential clusters of STDs that correspond to participants described sorting strategies were identified and they may have implications for message bundling. Disaggregation of the data by sex and age revealed slight variations in the relationships of HIV and human papillomavirus (HPV) to other STDs.

By identifying a set of cognitive attributes people use in organizing the overall semantic domain of STDs, ideas can be generated for how best to combine STD and HIV messages to meet public health communication goals.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the extent of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) crisis in Lebanese prisons, propose functional reforms for Roumieh prisons (the country's largest male top-security prison), and outline the main challenges to HIV/AIDS prevention, intervention, and treatment.

All recommendations were based on previous successful stories, international prison standards as well as cultural considerations.

This paper argues that prevention and interventions starts within the prison community including inmates, guards, and other prison and provision of appropriate health care, education, and prison infrastructure.

These strategies are not only important in limiting prevention and transmission of HIV/AIDS, but also contribute in optimizing quality of life within the prison system.

This paper is the first of its kind to discuss the prison situation in Lebanese prisons in terms of public health promotion and reforms.

This study seeks to explore the perspectives of young women in Uganda with the aim of better informing re HIV prevention.

Group discussions and interviews were used to explore issues relating to HIV prevention. An inductive content analysis identified emerging themes and patterns in the participants' conversations.

The study revealed that, although young women were informed and motivated to prevent HIV, poverty and inequality were significant barriers, limiting their power to protect themselves.

The research adds evidence to the current argument that failure to address the disempowering effects of poverty and gender inequality limits the effectiveness of current HIV prevention for young women. HIV prevention must now address poverty and gender vulnerabilities, promoting a protective environment, rather than focusing on influencing individual sexual behaviour.