NCJ Number
161634
Date Published
1995
Length
0 pages
Annotation
This video features programs that have been effective in reaching intravenous drug abusers to change high-risk behaviors that can transmit the HIV.
Abstract
The video portrays the actual work of outreach staff as they contact and instruct intravenous drug users in behaviors that can reduce their risk of becoming infected with the HIV. Comments are also offered by project administrators and the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which has researched the effectiveness of various programs to modify the high-risk behaviors of drug abusers. Outreach workers are shown entering the sites frequented by intravenous drug abusers to make the contacts necessary to begin educating the abusers about safe, drug-using behaviors designed to reduce the incidence of AIDS. Their primary focus is on instructing drug users in how to clean their syringes after each use or how drugs can be ingested without the use of needles. Commentators advise that outreach educational and counseling programs have been effective in changing addicts' high-risk behaviors, as evidenced in decreased intravenous drug use and a reduction in the incidence of AIDS among intravenous drug users.