Community mobilization as an HIV prevention strategy: The political challenges of confronting the AIDS epidemic in Brazil

This chapter documents the ways in which the Brazilian focus on community mobilization and empowerment has succeeded in implementing timely and effective HIV prevention programs in key affected communities such as sex workers and gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. Further, the chapter analyzes the ways in which this strategy made it possible to address many of the structural drivers of HIV in these communities. Of great importance, however, it also highlights the extent to which addressing these structural forces depended on a favorable political context capable of supporting and nurturing such approaches. The subsequent “shift” of focus in terms of HIV prevention in Brazil is then examined to show how the broader political ecology of the country unfavorably changed what had been an effective initial response to ending AIDS in Brazil.