NCJ Number
126783
Journal
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Dated: (October 1990) Pages: 259-270
Date Published
1990
Length
12 pages
Annotation
AIDS, more than any other social or medical problem of the past ten years has occasioned the application of ethnographic strategies to both policy and basic research.
Abstract
Since the official beginnings of the AIDS phenomenon in 1981, there has been growing awareness that AIDS is not merely "a gay disease," but an activity-related disease. As early as 1982, ethnographers were examining settings and activities that public health officials speculated were relevant to the transmission of the HIV. Des Jarlais, Friedman, and Strug (1986) shed light on the actual interactional mechanisms at work among intravenous drug users (IVDUs), whom public health officials already knew were highly at risk of contracting HIV. The federally funded National AIDS Demonstration Research Project (NADR) in September 1987 drew information from and targeted education, intervention, and referral services to three high-risk groups: IVDUs not in formal drug programs; sexual partners of IVDUs; and prostitutes in New York, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Houston. There are now 41 NADR programs operating in over 60 sites in the United States. Ethnographers' role in the AIDS crisis has become rather holistic because of the urgency of saving lives and alleviating suffering. 2 notes and 28 references