Empowerment, community mobilization and social change in the face of HIV/AIDS

On the basis of recent social and behavioral research, together with more than a decade of practical experience in countries around the world, an important shift has begun to take place in the models or paradigms that have been developed to understand and respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. A growing awareness of the complex social, cultural, political and economic forces shaping the epidemic - and, in particular, of the link between the social injustice and increased vulnerability to HIV infection - has led to the reformation of both theory and practice aimed at responding to AIDS and meeting the needs of those most affected by the epidemic.

The focus of HIV/AIDS prevention efforts has increasingly shifted from models aimed at changes in individual risk behavior to models aimed at community mobilization. An earlier emphasis on information-based educational campaigns has given way to intervention programs aimed at enablement and empowerment in the face of the epidemic.

These developments have been linked to a new awareness of the fundamental connection between public health and human rights, and to a new understanding of the fight against AIDS as part of a much broader process of social change aimed at redressing structures of inequality, intolerance and injustice.