Global AIDS Policy Watch (GAPW) has announced the launching of the article Moving Beyond Biomedicalization in the HIV Response: Implications for Community Involvement and Community Leadership Among Men Who Have Sex with Men and Transgender People, authored by Professors Peter Aggleton and Richard Parker (the later also co-chair of SPW ). The paper is published in e-View Ahead of Print format by the American Journal of Public Health.
In the article, the authors challenge the ways in which oversimplification and generalization ultimately prevent effective HIV policy and practice, as well as the status quo of current global HIV slogans that predict and cheer for the end of AIDS by 2030, even in the midst of trending resource constraints and the obvious scale-down of funding and program development that is taking place in many countries around the globe.
The authors also point out that public health practitioners and policymakers have oversimplified complex lived-experiences related to the concepts of ‘MSM’ and ‘community’. Aggleton and Parker argue that in doing so, public health has created a paradox: by abridging complex realities with broad and formulaic prevention and treatment models, researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers have inadvertently shut out the most vulnerable. This abbreviation has impeded the HIV and AIDS response. To address this problem, the authors urge for more comprehensive understandings of the affected communities through their own participation, and to not do so in a way that is convenient for service delivery but rather validates the realities of those who are most in need.
Reference:
Aggleton, P., & Parker, R. (2015). Moving beyond biomedicalization in the HIV response: Implications for community involvement and community leadership among men who have sex with men and transgender people. Available at American Journal of Public Health, e1-e7.