As yet another international AIDS conference prepares to kick off in Mexico City next week, the journal AIDS has published a special supplement that contains a think piece Tony Barnett of LSE and I wrote about the importance of hope to HIV infection. The abstract is here - please contact me for a more detailed summary.
We argue that if people lack hope for the future, they will not engage in actions designed to protect that future. In the case of AIDS, this means that people will not wear condoms during sex and will have multiple sexual partners at the same time, thus dramatically increasing their risk of infection. In the poorest parts of the world, millions lack hope, and in some of the poorest parts of the world, AIDS is rife. We discuss the potential of cash transfers to trigger hope and thereby encourage people to behave in ways that will protect their health. The examples of microcredit and cash transfer programs like South Africa's pension scheme and child support grant, which have had strong impacts on recipients' health, suggest that such transfers can have broad positive effects, and may even help to cut HIV infections..
