NCJ Number
142408
Editor(s)
T Hooker
Date Published
1993
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This report presents State leaders' recommendations for action on priority HIV and AIDS prevention issues.
Abstract
The recommendations stemmed from a roundtable meeting of legislators and State health officials, officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, national HIV experts, and people living with HIV disease. The States represented at the meeting were Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. One recommendation is that access to drug treatment and a broad spectrum of support services for women of child-bearing age is crucial to control the spread of HIV to chemically dependent women and their children; another is that access to timely information about the characteristics of people that engage in high-risk behaviors is essential to the targeting of populations at risk. The roundtable participants also concluded that comprehensive and skill- based HIV education programs in the schools is the key to changing risk-taking behaviors of youth; scientific and medical evidence instead of public fears should continue to drive policy debates on the HIV-infected health worker issue, and interventions that focus on the health problems of greater concern to rural residents will simultaneously be effective at controlling the spread of HIV. Thorough cost- benefit analysis and community involvement in program design and implementation improve the chances for acceptance and funding of HIV/AIDS continuums of care. Allowing for program flexibility of categorical funding will decrease the need for new money and new programs. A broad spectrum of collaboration among agencies and organizations of the private and public sectors is also recommended.