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Assessing the Social and Behavioral Science Base for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Intervention Workshop Summary (1995) / Chapter Skim
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PART III UNDERSTANDING HIGH-RISK COMMUNITIES
Pages 21-28

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From page 21...
... Others have pointed to the critical importance of the voluntary or involuntary character of membership in a community. The basis for the distinction here is between ascribed communities, into which individuals are placed by others because they possess particular characteristics, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, or other negatively or positively valued status, whether these individuals want to be so placed or not, and achieved communities, where membership depends upon the individual's choices and actions, such as a voluntary association or occupational community.
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From page 22...
... For example, many closeted gay and bisexual men and women struggle with the various cultural definitions of sexuality imposed on them and with their membership in both the straight and gay communities. A wide range of research methods has been employed to study communities: historical research; ecological census research; participant observation; and surveys, including those using targeted sampling.
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From page 23...
... This fierce repression alienated many, who wished to experience a freer and more accepting lifestyle. The creation of"gay refugees" was the precursor to the creation of"gay communities." San Francisco's Castro District, which had been an Irish workingclass community, was quickly transformed into the one of the largest centers of gay life in the United States (Fitzgerald, 1986~.
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From page 24...
... In the early 1970s, gonorrhea, syphilis, and hepatitis were the major diseases troubling the sexually active populace of San Francisco. Hepatitis was sufficiently common that San Francisco was chosen by the Centers for Disease Control as a site for lacy trials of the hepatitis vaccine.
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From page 25...
... By the late 1 970s, HIV infection was probably well established in some of these networks, so that the dislocations caused by the fires "seeded" the virus throughout the Bronx, as members of these networks were routed by the fires and forced to resettle. Wallace concludes that this period of population dislocation, destruction of stable neighborhood social networks, and emergence of a variety of social pathologies, from drug use to violent death, created the niche in which HIV expanded and grew during the 1980s.
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From page 26...
... Learning from demonstration programs in disintegrating communities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America may provide models for disintegrating communities in the United States, since this is a global phenomenon. First we have to learn which strategies are specific to the social context and which can be generalized.
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From page 27...
... Without primary health care to deliver safe medical treatment, including uncontaminated blood and sterile needles, the provision of information on sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS and the supply of condoms will have limited effect in war zones. 27 Because the concept of community is necessarily broad, the research needs for different types of high-risk communities will vary, but for all communities, contextual analysis (analysis of environmental factors such as neighborhood and community variables)
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From page 28...
... The general patterns of spread must be analyzed for each area. For example, examinations of local and regional patterns of spread in the United States have identified differences in the rates and patterns of spread in San Francisco, which has experienced a predominantly gay epidemic (see the story of Mark in Part II and the story of the gay community in Part III of this report)
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Key Terms

  • hiv infection
  • disintegrating communities
  • prevention efforts
  • sexually transmitted
  • social networks

  • community disintegration
  • preventive interventions
  • participant observation
  • undergoing war
  • contextual analysis

  • south bronx
  • drug users
  • gay communities
  • community organization
  • reach gay

  • transmitted diseases
  • community undergoing
  • wallace concludes
  • organizational patterns
  • past quarter

  • neighborhoods broke
  • positively valued
  • quarter century
  • ascribed communities
  • urban habitat

  • geographic modeling
  • misguided public
  • changing organizational
  • human rights
  • discriminatory policies


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