Lessons from the field: From research to application in the fight against AIDS among injection drug users in three New England cities

Social and behavioral research has made significant contributions to AIDS prevention. These contributions are multiple and have helped to make prevention more effective. Still, interventionists commonly bemoan barriers that diminish timely access to AIDS research findings and recognition of the programmatic and advocacy implications of research findings. This paper responds to these concerns by presenting a set of intervention and policy lessons learned through the implementation of a study of syringe access, use, and discard among injection drug users in three moderate-sized New England cities. This multi-method study that united ethnographic, epidemiological and laboratory components and a multidisciplinary research team began and ended with a strong commitment to moving findings quickly ftom the field into the hands of program and advocacy workers. Six specific lessons for prevention and advocacy are presented along with a review of their implications both for the fine-tuning of AIDS prevention targeted to injection drug user and for advocating for policies that support effective HIV risk reduction in this population.