Suchergebnisse

Structural interventions refer to public health interventions that promote health by altering the structural context within which health is produced and reproduced. They draw on concepts from multiple disciplines, including public health, psychiatry, and psychology, in which attention to interventions is common, and sociology and political economy, where structure is a familiar, if contested, concept. This has meant that even as discussions of structural interventions bring together researchers from various fields, they can get stalled in debates over definitions. In this paper, we seek to move these discussions forward by highlighting a number of critical issues raised by structural interventions, and the subsequent implications of these for research.

One third of all cases of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the United States are associated with the injection of illicit drugs. There is mounting evidence for the effectiveness of syringe exchange programs in reducing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) risk behavior and HIV transmission among injection drug users. Expansion of syringe exchange would require increased public funding and undoubtedly would include government regulation of syringe exchanges. An analogy is drawn with the present system of regulation of methadone maintenance treatment programs and possible regulation of syringe exchange programs. Specific recommendations are offered to reduce the likelihood of repeating the regulatory problems of methadone maintenance treatment in future regulation of syringe exchange programs.