Social, Structural and Behavioral Interventions for HIV Prevention

Dear Colleagues,

Evidence-based and -informed social, structural, and behavioral interventions have great potential to further reduce HIV transmission and synergistically improve the acceptability, adoption, persistence, feasibility, appropriateness, penetration, and fidelity of social, behavioral, and biomedical interventions including PrEP, PEP, and Treatment as Prevention (TasP). Biobehavioral interventions that combine social and medical prevention approaches have a critical role in ending the HIV epidemic. The scaling up of these tools has not produced sufficient declines in HIV incidence to reach global prevention targets, in part due to social, behavioral, implementation, and structural barriers that prevent available services from reaching populations who could benefit from them. More work is needed to improve health equity and to ensure that these tools effectively reach the key populations most impacted by HIV, including gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM); people of transgender experience; people involved in the sex trade; people who inject drugs; and people living with HIV. Racism, sexism, transphobia, lack of economic opportunities, and other social injustices continue to present barriers to ending the HIV epidemic. Papers addressing these topics, from a range of country and regional contexts globally, are invited for this Topic and may include quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods original research on intervention development, adaptation, implementation, evaluation, and/or outcomes.

Prof. Dr. Greg Rebchook
Prof. Dr. Susan Kegeles
Dr. Sophia Zamudio-Haas
Topic Editors