Background

The late 1980's and the 1990s showed an increase in HIV infection within urban communities, and a particularly high rate of risk among injection drug users (IDUs) and their sex partners. Today, IDUs remain one of the populations most vulnerable to HIV infection. Injection drug use is associated with increased exposure to blood-borne and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, which often results from sharing of injection equipment, sex-for-drug exchanges, or unprotected sex while high. The CDC initiated the National Health Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) to help state and local health departments establish and maintain a surveillance system to monitor selected behaviors and access to prevention services among groups at highest risk for HIV infection, including injection drug users. Findings from NHBS will be used to enhance understanding of risk and testing behaviors, and to develop and evaluate HIV prevention programs that provide services to these specific populations. 

ICR has participated in monitoring the risk of injection drug users (IDUs) since 1988. In studies like the Hartford, CT-based Project COPE (Community Outreach for Prevention Education): Preventing AIDS Among Injection Drug Users and their Sex Partners, the follow-up COPE II, and the longitudinal study COPE III, ICR collaborated with other community-based organizations in Hartford’s high-risk neighborhoods to assess HIV risks associated with drug use and unprotected sex. These projects conducted risk assessments and gave free HIV antibody tests to IDUs and other drug users.  ICR has continued to assess HIV risks within networks of IDUs in the Study of High-Risk Drug Use Settings for HIV Prevention and with the peer-delivered intervention study with drug users called HIV Prevention in High-Risk Drug Use Sites: Project RAP. ICR’s community-based approach and long term dedication to populations at risk of HIV infection will contribute to the CDC’s overall aims and approach to HIV surveillance and prevention.