Learning From Unsung Failures

In the midst of America’s opioid crisis, the successes of the 1990s HIV response are often held up as a blueprint for how to tackle threats to population health.

But there are key lessons to be learned from its failures as well—and that requires “a less celebratory accounting” of the legacy of the HIV/AIDS response, write Caroline M. Parker, of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and colleagues.

One key lesson: A failure to tackle the structural factors of the HIV/AIDS epidemic meant there was a “concentration of suffering among the most socially disadvantaged populations.” 

New England Journal of Medicine (Perspective)