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The Context of HIV Risk Among Drug Users and Their Sexual Partners

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(this volume), there is little attention paid to the gender-specific<br />

contextual issues <strong>of</strong> injection drug use as outlined above.<br />

In her review, O’Leary (this volume) points out that sexual risk reduction<br />

programs for women require great sensitivity to problems <strong>of</strong> male<br />

domination <strong>of</strong> sexual roles. Prevention programs instruct women to<br />

require male partners to use condoms. <strong>Sexual</strong> partners may be longst<strong>and</strong>ing<br />

relationships, casual partners, or potential long-term partners<br />

who may or may not be willing to comply for different reasons,<br />

depending on the nature <strong>of</strong> the partnership or the individual psychology.<br />

Although the majority <strong>of</strong> males do not respond with hostility to a condom<br />

request, some do.<br />

Violent assaults on women by male sexual partners, documented for over<br />

a century (Gordon 1988), are estimated to occur for as many as 1 in 4<br />

women (Herman 1992). Yet this problem, which exists in all social<br />

classes, seldom has been considered formally in risk reduction programs.<br />

Women who use illicit psychoactive substances are especially likely to<br />

have a childhood history <strong>of</strong> physical <strong>and</strong> sexual abuse as well as violent<br />

adult sexual partnerships (Boyd 1993). Prevention programs should<br />

counsel both men <strong>and</strong> women to recognize abuse potential <strong>and</strong> to develop<br />

strategies to reduce abusive behavior as part <strong>of</strong> safer sex awareness <strong>and</strong><br />

practice.<br />

Other points in the O’Leary review bear reiteration. <strong>The</strong> crisis-driven<br />

lifestyle <strong>of</strong> many urban poor people <strong>of</strong>ten results in placing a low priority<br />

on safer sex practices (Kalickman et al. 1992). While under studied,<br />

stabilization <strong>of</strong> lifestyle is likely an important factor in risk reduction,<br />

Most important is the recommendation that community-based<br />

intervention programs can be used to fine-tune <strong>HIV</strong> prevention messages<br />

to their own communities. <strong>The</strong> advantage <strong>of</strong> establishing communitybased<br />

prevention programs is that new strategies may be tested directly<br />

using the images, language, <strong>and</strong> styles <strong>of</strong> a community as defined by the<br />

community itself.<br />

What is missing in the review on sex risk also is missing in the <strong>HIV</strong><br />

literature in general: focused research on sexual risk behavior <strong>and</strong> its<br />

reduction in different social strata. One suspects there are many<br />

commonalities among women in different social strata, but there are no<br />

comparative studies. A potential effect <strong>of</strong> more broad-based research on<br />

women’s strategies in practicing safer sex might be to dilute the excessive<br />

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