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Making the Ideal Real: Biomedical HIV Prevention as Social Public Health

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Remaking HIV Prevention in the 21st Century

Part of the book series: Social Aspects of HIV ((SHIV,volume 5))

Abstract

This chapter interrogates how assumptions about biomedical HIV prevention configure social factors as largely secondary to effectiveness, either as barriers to rollout and uptake of treatment as prevention (TasP), or as the pliable conduits for the same processes. They also gloss over the reflexivity of people who are the subjects of biomedical HIV prevention, ignoring the often unanticipated effects it may have in their social and sexual lives. Like previous approaches to HIV prevention, a biomedical approach needs to engage with the limitations inherent in the assumptions it makes and view itself as open to modification. In doing so, there may be value in understanding biomedical HIV prevention as an assemblage of biomedical, social and political forces and effects, each of which is necessary for it to effectively serve all who are in need of it.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The interview fragments come from the Transformative HIV and Sexual Health Technologies project, funded by a Monash Research Accelerator Grant (2013–2014). Ethics approval for this project was granted by Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for comments from Paul Flowers and Corinne Squire and the contributions made by interviewees. Research for this chapter was in part supported by a grant from the Monash University Research Accelerator Programme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Mark Davis

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  1. Mark Davis
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Correspondence to Mark Davis .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Sarah Bernays

  2. Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Adam Bourne

  3. Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW Sydney, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia

    Susan Kippax

  4. Centre for Social Research in Health, UNSW Sydney, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia

    Peter Aggleton

  5. Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, USA

    Richard Parker

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Davis, M. (2021). Making the Ideal Real: Biomedical HIV Prevention as Social Public Health. In: Bernays, S., Bourne, A., Kippax, S., Aggleton, P., Parker, R. (eds) Remaking HIV Prevention in the 21st Century. Social Aspects of HIV, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69819-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69819-5_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-69818-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-69819-5

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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