Exceptionalism at the End of AIDS

Abstract

HIV/AIDS exceptionalism promoted compassion, garnered funding, built institutions, and shaped regulatory and research agendas under emergency conditions. Globally, however, HIV/AIDS exceptionalism has further fragmented fragile health service delivery systems in vulnerable, marginalized communities and created perverse incentives to influence seropositive individuals' behaviors. Even where HIV epidemics are viewed as "controlled" or "resolved" (as in the United States), ending AIDS requires eliminating exceptionalism, normalizing justice-based approaches to HIV care, and explicitly acknowledging how power dynamics shape popular narratives and practices.To claim one AMA PRA Category 1 Credit TM for the CME activity associated with this article, you must do the following: (1) read this article in its entirety, (2) answer at least 80 percent of the quiz questions correctly, and (3) complete an evaluation. The quiz, evaluation, and form for claiming AMA PRA Category 1 Credit TM are available through the AMA Ed Hub TM .HIV/AIDS Research When we began planning this essay, we talked about the experiences that led us to HIV/AIDS research.A.B.: In 1997, I enrolled in my first (and only) undergraduate anthropology course, "AIDS in International Perspective." It was a small seminar-no more than a dozen studentsfor which we read hundreds of pages per week and, on a weekly basis, met someone from the AIDS community in southern New England. The course's instructors also required us to volunteer in one of the many AIDS programs in our small state. I joined an AIDS peer-education group geared toward out-of-school youth and became the group's co-leader the following year. Over the next 5 years, I worked for prison doctors who specialized in HIV treatment, interned in the Department for HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and consulted for a range of HIV/AIDS programs for international nongovernmental organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. Ten years after that first anthropology course, I completed dissertation fieldwork among HIV-positive Sierra Leoneans, funded by an AIDS training grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

‘Don’t think that we die from AIDS’: Invisibilised uncertainty and global transgender health

“…Meanwhile, global ‘problem choice’ is the creation, definition, categorisation and pursuit of certain issues, specifically within a largely unequal global health field comprised of many Global North‐based institutions with particular aims and deliverables (Greene et al., 2013 , p. 34; see also Ziman, 1987 ). Of these priorities is the HIV epidemic, which has been a large focus of global health organisations, sometimes to the exclusion or deprioritisation of other health and disease burdens (Benton & Sangaramoorthy, 2021 ; Vijayakumar, 2021 ). Yet, less work has analysed how global problem choice and state‐level processes foster gaps in holistic health research and data collection, exacerbating medical uncertainty for people across various social identities and geopolitical locations.…”