Enabling Approaches For HIV/AIDS Prevention: Can We Modify The Environment And Minimize The Risk?

The search for effective intervention approaches to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS is an on-going process. It is noted however that one area that has received insufficient attention in HIV prevention is influencing the social and environmental determinants of risk known as ‘enabling approaches’. Enabling approaches intend to remove barriers or constraints to protective action or conversely to erect barriers or constraints to risk-taking. In the context of AIDS it has been used to refer to the vulnerability of populations for example the obstacles that women encounter in reducing risk of HIV and the corresponding need to address these obstacles. As such two categories of determinants and hence two types of enabling approaches are examined in this article which include economic and policy. However challenges do exist in pursuing this prevention strategy. These include the challenge of understanding situations where risk occurs; challenge of thinking about the intervention options; the need to consult more widely than among the traditional providers of HIV prevention; the need to consider how this approach can work with; and the final challenge relates to evaluation.