In 2008, the District of Colombia's Department of Health started a needle exchange and HIV testing and treatment referral program. Research from George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health has shown this program prevented more than 100 new HIV cases over a two-year period.
Since 1998, Congress has banned the use of federal funds for needle exchange programs. Many states and cities used locally generated revenues to fund such exchanges, but the ban kept the district from using municipal funds to do the same. Then, in December 2007, legislation passed and lifted the ban, and the city's Department of Health implemented its program.
A research team led by Monica Ruiz, PhD, MD, an assistant research professor in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at Milken Institute SPH, examined how this policy change affected the HIV epidemic in terms of new cases associated with injection drug use. The study was published in the scientific journal AIDS and Behavior.
Studying surveillance data, the team found that, had the district ban remained in place, an estimated 296 injection drug users would have gotten HIV during the next two years. In fact, only 176 new cases of injection drug use-associated HIV were reported, meaning the policy change and subsequent needle exchange program prevented 120 new cases of HIV infection.
Dr. Ruiz and her team also used the CDC's estimates on the average lifetime cost of treating HIV and calculated that preventing 120 cases of HIV led to a savings of roughly $44.3 million.
"This [study] shows that policy change matters for HIV prevention," Dr. Ruiz told The Washington Post. She added that AIDS prevention is often focused on changing individual behavior, "But policy changes like this that help people to get the resources that they need to stay healthy and prevent infection — those are hugely important."
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