AIDS Prevention Programs: A Critical Review

Abstract

One way to measure the state of the art in HIV/AIDS educational intervention policy, practice, and research is to review the contents of professional journals directed primarily to health education. One such journal, the International Quarterly of Community Health Education, has seen the number of articles submitted which deal with community health education aspects of HIV/AIDS prevention increase by five times from 1984–89 to 1990–95. The number of articles on this subject actually published increased by more than six times, from three to twenty.

A critical review of the content of those articles published during the 1990s in this Journal provides a diversity of views about the kinds of theoretical models and typologies that are applicable to HIV/AIDS educational interventions. It also suggests the crying need to focus more of these social and behavioral models in a cultural context. This article provides a brief overview of AIDS in the U.S. and international settings, a description of the complexity of application of social and behavioral change models in their present context, and a review of the three categories of articles which have been published in the Journal: dogma, dissent, and innovation.