Richard G. Parker

Sexual Practices and Attitudes of Street Youth in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Street youth are at risk of HIV infection worldwide. To develop effective prevention strategies, information about the meanings and functions of sexual activity for street youth is needed. In this paper, data from structured questionnaires, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews and field observations are used to build up a picture of the sexual culture of 9-to-18-year-olds living and/or working on the streets of a large Brazilian city. The findings reveal that these children and adolescents engage in sexual behavior that puts them at risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, and reinforce that sex is a multi-determined and entrenched behavior in this population. Interventions must take into account the fact that for street youth, sex is used as a means of ensuring survival, seeking comfort, finding pleasure, and dealing with psychological issues that arise during adolescence.

Qualitative research on homosexual and bisexual behavior relevant to HIV/AIDS

The spread of the international AIDS pandemic has drawn attention to the urgent need for data on human sexual behavior; yet the lack of an established tradition of theory and method in sex research has limited the development of research initiatives in this area. This has been particularly true in the study of homosexual and bisexual behavior, which has relied heavily on the use of quantitative survey methods that largely fail to address cross‐cultural differences in the structure and meaning of same‐sex sexual experience. More qualitative approaches offer the possibility of investigating homosexual and bisexual behavior within a broader social and cultural context and can therefore play an important role in developing a framework for the comparative analysis of behavioral data. This article seeks to contribute to the development of theory and method in sex research by outlining key research issues and possible methodologies for the qualitative investigation of homosexual and bisexual behavior in relation...

Rethinking health research capacity strengthening

Health research capacity strengthening (HRCS) is a strategy implemented worldwide to improve the ability of developing countries to tackle the persistent and disproportionate burdens of disease they face. Drawing on a review of existing HRCS literature and our experiences over the course of an HRCS project in Vietnam, we summarise major challenges to the HRCS enterprise at the interpersonal, institutional and macro levels. While over the course of several decades of HRCS initiatives many of these challenges have been well documented, we highlight several considerations that remain underarticulated. We advance critical considerations of the HRCS enterprise by discussing (1) how the organisation of US public health funding shapes the ecology of knowledge production in low- and middle-income country contexts, (2) the barriers US researchers face to effectively collaborate in capacity strengthening for research-to-policy translation, and (3) the potential for unintentional negative consequences if HRCS efforts are not sufficiently reflexive about the limitations of dominant paradigms in public health research and intervention.

Reflexões sobre a sexualidade na sociedade latino-americana: implicações para intervenções em face do HIV/AIDS

Esse texto discute questoes relacionadas a sexualidade e HIV / AIDS na America Latina, enfocando as formas pelas quais as culturas sexuais organizam representacoes e praticas que podem levar a vulnerabilidade em relacao a infeccao pelo HIV. Discute-se, ainda, o desenvolvimento de um programa amplo de prevencao a infeccao para homens que fazem sexo com homens. O texto sugere que intervencoes para reduzir o risco de infeccao pelo HIV nao devem ser limitadas no âmbito comportamental, mas, principalmente, no das representacoes que os individuos tem sobre suas praticas sexuais. Mudancas comportamentais devem ser conceituadas como parte de um processo mais abrangente de mudancas sociais - processo este que e, por natureza, menos tecnico do que social, cultural e politico.

Social and policy dimensions of HIV and AIDS in Vietnam. Introduction.

Over the course of more than three decades now, social and behavioural research on HIV and AIDS has evolved in a range of important ways within the field of global public health. From its origins during the first decade of the epidemic primarily in resource-rich industrialised countries such as the USA, Australia and Canada, and the key countries of Western Europe (Turner et al. 1989), in the 1990s a rapidly growing body of work emerged in Latin American countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Peru, as well as many of the most heavily affected sub-Saharan African countries such as Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda (Miller et al. 1990, Cohen and Trussell 1996, Bastos 1999, Smallman 2007). Following the broader spread of the epidemic globally, during the past decade, social and behavioural research has increased significantly in many of the major countries of Asia, such as China, India, Thailand and Indonesia (Narain 2004), as well as in parts of the former socialist block countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Adeyi 2003). While the size, economic importance and potential epidemiological impact of HIV in many large countries have been sufficient to generate both internal research activity and external scientific interest, the lack of the existing research infrastructure together with their often lower status in relation to international development priorities has meant that many smaller countries with more recent or emerging HIV epidemics have tended to lag behind in the development of meaningful social and behavioural research responses to the epidemic.

Human Sexuality and Aids: The Case of Male Bisexuality

The rapid spread of the international AIDS pandemic has forced us to confront the limitations in our understanding of a whole range of social and behavioral factors linked to infection with HIV (11). Nowhere has this been more evident than in studies of sexual behavior, the single most important mode of HIV transmission in almost every society. Yet, in spite of its obvious importance, human sexuality has suffered a long history of scientific neglect, leaving us largely unprepared to deal with many of the most important issues raised by the sexual transmission of HIV (1).