What works best?

The best HIV prevention programs use a combination of persuasion and enablement. Persuasion involves giving people accurate information and motivating them to protect their health, while enablement involves making it easier for people to implement knowledge about protecting their health into practice. It includes making condoms readily available and making health services accessible and supportive. It also involves changing laws and policies so that people at risk, such as youth, sex workers, and IV drug users, will be easier to reach. The most successful HIV prevention programs involve communities, build partnerships and trust between people, involve people with HIV in all stages, develop communities' skills and knowledge, create an open and accepting environment, involve sectors other than health, gain support from major decision-makers, are carefully planned and evaluated, and recognize that even well planned approaches sometimes fail. Successful programs also include the following components: information on HIV transmission, activities, training, and access to reproductive health resources. People's concerns, risk groups, evaluation, and new opportunities emerging through the development of new technologies are discussed.