Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project

PREVENTION RESEARCH AND POLICIES

Walt Senterfitt

Prevention Justice Seminar, 6th October

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Walt Senterfitt is an epidemiologist living and working in Los Angeles. He is currently administers an Institutional Review Board and serves as the Compliance Officer for the protection of the rights of human subjects in research at the Los Angeles County Health Department. Walt has specialized in HIV prevention epidemiology since completing his graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts and UCLA schools of public health.

From 2000 through 2002, he served as a Visiting Scientist at the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention in charge of coordinating demonstration projects of HIV prevention interventions with HIV positive people. His special focus as a public health official has been to increase the active collaboration of researchers and policy makers with the community constituencies that are the “targets” and intended beneficiaries of the research and policy.

Walt is a gay man living with AIDS. After coming out as gay in 1972, he led in helping to organize an infrastructure for the nascent gay and lesbian community in Washington, DC, including founding what is now the Whitman-Walker Clinic. He was active in the Southern civil rights movement in the 60’s while an undergraduate and was on the staff of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Recommended Readings
Prevention Research and Policies

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I. DeCarlo, P., Coates, T.J. (1998) Does HIV Prevention Work?. Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, www.caps.ucsf.edu/capsweb/preventionrev.html

II. Lurie, P., DeCarlo, P. (1998) Does HIV Needles Exchange Work?. Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, www.caps.ucsf.edu/capsweb/NEPrev.html

III. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ‘Advancing HIV Prevention: New Strategies for a Changing Epidemic’ (2003),
www.cdc.gov/hiv/partners/ahp_program.htm

IV. What Is the Role of Counseling and Testing in HIV Prevention?, A newly updated CAPS 2-pager on the centrality of counseling and testing in HIV prevention strategies www.caps.ucsf.edu/pdfs/C&TFS.pdf

V. HIV/AIDS Anti-Stigma Initiative The initiative, funded by the Ford Foundation, is examining what is known about HIV/AIDS-related stigma through targeted anti-stigma programs implemented by five community-based organizations in the United States www.hivaidsstigma.org

VI. Compendium of HIV Prevention Interventions with Evidence of Effectiveness From CDC's HIV/AIDS Prevention Research Synthesis Project, November 1999 (Revised August 31, 2001). A 64-page booklet presenting a summary of about 75 prevention interventions that, at the time of the latest revision, met the CDC’s rigorous criteria for having been rigorously evaluated in a controlled study with a comparison or control group and found to be effective in reducing HIV risk behaviors www.cdc.gov/hiv/pubs/hivcompendium.htm

VII. Five Years of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: Assessing the Impact. (www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/stateevaluations/index.htm). New review by Advocates for Youth of the evaluation by ten states of programs funded by the federal government’s first large abstinence-only education program funded by Congress in 1996. The conclusion states: “Abstinence-only programs show little evidence of sustained (long-term) impact on attitudes and intentions. Worse, they show some negative impacts on youth’s willingness to use contraception, including condoms, to prevent negative sexual health outcomes related to sexual intercourse. Importantly, only in one state did any program demonstrate short-term success in delaying the initiation of sex; none of these programs demonstrates evidence of long-term success in delaying sexual initiation among youth exposed to the programs or any evidence of success in reducing other sexual risk-taking behaviors among participants.”

VIII. Incorporating HIV Prevention into the Medical Care of Persons Living with HIV: Recommendations Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MMWR 2003;52(No. RR-12):1-24. (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5212a1.htm) Recommendations based on published evidence and a consensus panel about incorporating HIV prevention interventions into the primary medical care of HIV positive people, by training doctors and nurses to deliver brief interventions, by having other specially trained staff or peers do so and/or be referring to specific, linked community programs.

IX. Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science. 5,000+ scientists signed on to this report by the Union of Concerned Scientists in February, 2004. http://www.ucsusa.org/documents/RSI_final_fullreport.pdf

X. Supplementary report in July, 2004 with new examples of Bush Administration misuse of science http://www.ucsusa.org/documents/Scientific_Integrity_in_Policy_Making_July_2004.pdf