Editorial: HIV/AIDS social and behavioural research: past advances and thoughts about the future

Jean-Paul Moatti and Yves Souteyrand

Social Science & Medicine, 2000, vol. 50, issue 11, 1519-1532

Abstract: This paper is an introduction to the various contributions in this special issue of Social Science & Medicine which are an attempt to synthesise the main debates of the 2nd European Conference on Social and Behavioural Research on AIDS held in Paris, in January 1998. The paper discusses how the recent advent of highly active antiretroviral therapies (HAART) and new trends in the epidemic (its concentration in the socially most vulnerable groups and countries) have affected the research agenda of European social and behavioural sciences (SBS) in HIV/AIDS. Questions which had already been thoroughly studied by SBS (like determinants of HIV-related risk behaviours, or impact of gender and socio-economic inequities as well as discrimination on the diffusion of HIV) will have to be "revisited" in light of these recent changes. New issues (such as risk behaviours among already infected patients, impact of therapeutic advances on psychosocial and daily life management of their disease by people living with HIV/AIDS, adherence to treatment, or "normalisation" of AIDS public policies) will have to be strongly and quickly dealt with, in order for SSB to keep the pace with the rapid evolution of the epidemic and of the societal responses to it. Finally, the paper argues that to face these challenges, new theoretical and methodological advances will have to go beyond the classical oppositions in internal debates among SSB between individualistic and holistic approaches, or between radical criticism of the existing state of the world and practical involvement in public health decision-making.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS; Risk; Behaviours; Prevention; Adherence/compliance; Aids; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(99)00462-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:50:y:2000:i:11:p:1519-1532

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().