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AIDS Exceptionalism: Another Constituency Heard From

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Abstract

Amidst current debates over resources for AIDS, we examine the policy preferences of the people who are navigating AIDS in their daily lives. Survey and ethnographic data on the prioritization of HIV/AIDS interventions were collected in a longitudinal cohort study in rural Malawi. Study participants gave higher priority to problems other than AIDS. Confining analysis to HIV-positive survey respondents only weakly raises the prioritization of HIV/AIDS services. The ethnographic data are consistent with these findings: although rural Malawians are fully aware of the risk of dying from AIDS, other problems are perceived as more pressing for their community.

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Acknowledgments

The research was supported by grants to Susan Watkins and other investigators of the MLSFH from NICHD (R01-HD41713, R01-HD05942, R01-HD044228, R01-RHD053781A). Kim Yi Dionne acknowledges the financial support of the Fulbright International Education Exchange Program and the California Center for Population Research at UCLA. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations.

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Correspondence to Kim Yi Dionne.

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Dionne, K.Y., Gerland, P. & Watkins, S. AIDS Exceptionalism: Another Constituency Heard From. AIDS Behav 17, 825–831 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-011-0098-5

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