Deadliest disease
HIV is one of the deadliest diseases that faces humankind. Previously, HIV prevention focused on behavioral measures. However, medical advances have shifted the focus of HIV prevention to biomedical strategies of prevention. Antiretroviral drugs are the major drugs that help in preventing HIV infection. However, use of biomedical preventive strategies raises the issue of financing of the biomedical preventive strategies. It is a fact that the U.S. has one of the highest public healthcare financing in the world. Therefore, certain parties may oppose increasing the burden on taxpayers by financing the preventive strategies. Healthcare insurance providers are usually reluctant to provide coverage for measures that may reduce the risk of the insurance policy holder from contacting HIV. Insurers usually use the cost-effectiveness of a measure to determine whether to provide cover for the measure (Underhill, 2012). This raises the question as to whether it is right to disregard life in the pursuit for profits.
HIV prevention strategies
HIV prevention strategies usually target vulnerable populations. Therefore, the prevention strategies focus on individuals and social structures. In so doing, they ignore the importance of the community in the prevention of HIV transmission. The individualistic approach assumes that individuals are rational beings. Therefore, they would act on the information regarding HIV prevention and transmission that is available to them. However, this is a wrong assumption. People may fail to act on the information regarding HIV prevention and transmission. This may reduce the effectiveness of the strategies. On the other hand, the social approach considers the social barriers that may hinder the ability of individuals to act. The social barriers may reduce the effectiveness of HIV prevention strategies among vulnerable populations. However, both strategies do not take into consideration the effects of community practices on HIV transmission. Healthcare insurance providers should also play a critical role in the prevention of HIV transmission. HIV prevention strategies that focus on the effects of community practices on HIV transmission are usually very effective.
Most HIV prevention strategies focus on the risky behaviors among vulnerable populations that increase their chances of contracting HIV. These risky behaviors include unprotected sexual intercourse and sharing of injecting devices. These strategies focus on modifying the behaviors the vulnerable populations. In so doing, the strategies assume that if individuals could access information on how to avoid HIV transmission, they would change their behaviors to reduce their chances of contracting HIV. Therefore, these strategies assume that lack of information is the major driver of HIV transmission. These strategies focus on technologies that would reduce HIV transmission among the vulnerable populations. In addition, the strategies focus on how they may target the vulnerable populations to encourage them to adopt the technologies to reduce their chances of contracting HIV. In so doing, the strategies focus on the safety of vulnerable populations. However, they avoid the pleasure and rights of the vulnerable populations (Healy & Link, 2011).
The concept of vulnerability also determines the effectiveness of various HIV prevention strategies. It considers the effect of gender, economic, social, racial, and legal inequalities in HIV transmission. It focuses on the mode of transmission of HIV and how people respond to HIV. Therefore, advocacy in addressing the inequalities would go a long way in addressing HIV transmission. However, the concept of vulnerability in determining how to tackle HIV transmission has several shortcomings. It “invokes a false dualism between people and the societies they inhabit and produce” (Kippax et al., 2013, p. 1369). Therefore, it assumes vulnerable populations are different from their social environment. It assumes that despite the fact that the social environment of the vulnerable populations determines their actions and behaviors, they are usually unable to control them. In addition, the concept of vulnerability does not appreciate the effect of the collective agency due to social relations on the transmission of HIV.
HIV prevention strategies that focus on the social drivers of HIV transmission are usually very effective. The social drivers approach considers the effect of social interactions on the development of new social practices and norms. People’s response to the risk of HIV usually leads to the transformation of the social practices of the community. The social drivers strategies strive to build capabilities that would enable people get what they desire without contracting HIV. The social drivers approach enables facilitates the integration of HIV prevention strategies in the continuous transformation of the society (Kippax et al., 2013)
Insurance companies play a critical role in prevention of transmission of HIV. Insurance companies usually cover the medical costs associated with HIV. Therefore, it is vital for the insurance companies to incorporate several measures that would reduce the probability of the policy holders from contracting HIV. The Affordable Care Act requires healthcare insurance providers to provide people living with HIV and AIDs with information and services that would enable them to manage their conditions better. It requires healthcare insurance providers to provide information in a user-friendly manner. In addition, it requires the healthcare insurance providers to provide regular HIV screening and counselling to vulnerable adults and teenagers at no additional costs. These measures would help in reducing the transmission of HIV (Ford & Spicer, 2012). In the short term, these measures may be expensive to the healthcare insurance providers. However, they would lead to a significant reduction in the healthcare costs in the long term.
References
Ford, M.A. & Spicer, C.M. (2012). Monitoring HIV care in the United States: A strategy for generating national estimates of HIV care and coverage. Atlanta, GA: National Academies Press.
Healy, L.M. & Link, R.J. (2011). Handbook of international social work: Human rights, development, and the global profession. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kippax, S., Stephenson, N., Parker, R.G. & Aggleton, P. (2013). Between individual agency and structure in HIV prevention: Understanding the middle ground of social practice. American Journal of Public Health, 103(8), 1367-1375.
Underhill, K. (2012). Paying for prevention: Challenges to health insurance coverage for biomedical HIV prevention in the United States. American Journal of Law & Medicine, 38(4), 607-666.