International Journal of Drug Policy
Volume 18, Issue 2 , Pages 92-98, March 2007

Coverage of HIV prevention programmes for injection drug users: Confusions, aspirations, definitions and ways forward

  • Mukta Sharma

      Affiliations

    • Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
    • Tel.: +880 1715286397; fax: +880 29887563.
    • ,
  • Dave Burrows

      Affiliations

    • AIDS Projects Management Group, Level 2, 50 York Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 8231 6625; fax: +61 2 8231 6624.
    • ,
  • Ricky Bluthenthal

      Affiliations

    • RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, PO Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138, United States
    • Urban Community Research Centre, California State University Dominguez Hills, United States

Received 15 October 2006; received in revised form 26 November 2006; accepted 27 November 2006.

Abstract 

The concept of coverage first emerged in the 1960s as a key indicator for measuring the proportion of populations that were covered by health care. In the area of HIV interventions among injecting drug users, the term “coverage” has been used for widely different aspects of reach and effectiveness of programmes. This paper reviews an array of ways of thinking about coverage from the scientific and grey literature and discusses methods of estimating coverage, finding that some measures of coverage refer to individuals, others to populations and others to populations covered by services. Nomenclature for these various types of “coverage” are discussed and recommendations are provided for future attempts to measure coverage of harm reduction interventions.

Keywords: HIV, AIDS, Harm reduction, Geographical coverage, Individual coverage, Needle-exchange programmes, Methadone, Quality of services, Outreach

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PII: S0955-3959(06)00240-4

doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2006.11.012

International Journal of Drug Policy
Volume 18, Issue 2 , Pages 92-98, March 2007

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