Risk-Reduction Counseling for Individuals and Groups

Abstract

Individuals are not at risk for AIDS because of who they are. Gay men do not become exposed to HIV infection because they are homosexual, but rather only if they engage in specific high-risk sexual activities or engaged in those activities in the past and acquired the virus. In the same sense, intravenous drug use is dangerous but not with respect to AIDS unless the drug user shares needles. Because AIDS has been so closely identified with risk groups, there is often a tendency to assume that risk-group membership confers likelihood of developing the illness. It does not. Rather, it is engaging in certain identifiable behaviors that places persons at risk for AIDS.