Roundtable: Discussions on How Partnerships Can Help Address Access to Sterile Syringes as an Upstream Social Marketing Challenge

Abstract

The transmission of HIV and viral hepatitis (hepatitis B, hepatitis C) through injection drug use is a significant public health problem in the United States. In the early fight against HIV, freestanding needle exchange programs were the focus of attempts to increase injection drug users' (IDUs‘) access to sterile syringes. At present, needle exchange programs exist in some areas, but providing access to sterile syringes for IDUs is riddled with legislative, environmental, and social barriers. These include prohibited federal funding, state and local laws prohibiting possession of syringes, and moral interference by pharmacists for issuing syringes. This roundtable session introduced the current environmental, political, and social landscape of access to sterile syringes in the United States and was supplemented with breakout work groups to determine social marketing and partnership strategies to administer public health change in the “upstream” arena. The results of the discussion groups provided innovative thinking on partnership development to stimulate effective public health change to increase IDU access to sterile syringes.