Sharing Common Principles: Blending the Primary Health Care and Harm Reduction Paradigms to Meet Common Health Goals in HIV/AIDS Prevention

Abstract

HIV/AIDS continues to spread globally and deeply affecting resource-poor settings, with over 90% of cases occurring in developing countries. In these areas, primary health care remains the preferred model of health care delivery; advocating core principles including community involvement, equity, and an emphasis on disease prevention while providing basic medical treatment. The harm reduction paradigm shares key principles with primary health care, and as this paper will argue, a combined comprehensive HIV prevention strategy would provide a holistic and particularly effective approach to HIV prevention. The most important improvement achieved through a combined HIV prevention strategy is by providing the community with an increased number of social services including housing and employment services, financial counselling, mental health counselling, and referrals to additional medical services. In also addressing the social determinants of health, a combined primary health care and harm reduction approach act to provide a holistic disease prevention strategy that also seeks to address the conditions that lead to increased risk-taking behaviours. Additional evidence indicating a successful comprehensive prevention strategy remains closely tied to measures of effectiveness, including improvements in HIV prevalence and incidence rates, needle and syringe coverage, and treatment services for HIV/AIDS patients.