Some Musings About Big Events and the Past and Future of Drug Use and of HIV and Other Epidemics

Abstract

The term “Big Events” began as a way to help understand how wars, transitions and other crises shape long-term HIV epidemiology in affected areas. It directs attention to the roles of ordinary people in shaping these outcomes. Big Events themselves can take years, as in long-term armed struggles like those in Colombia and also long-term political and economic changes like the turn over the last 15 years of many Latin American countries away from neoliberalism and towards attempts to build solidarity economies of some form. The effects of Big Events on HIV epidemics, at least, may run in phases: In the short term, by creating vulnerability to epidemic outbreaks among existing Key Populations like people who inject drugs (PWID) or men who have sex with men (MSM); then, in their non-PWID (or non-MSM) risk networks; and perhaps, several years later, among youth who became involved in high-risk sexual or drug use networks and behaviors due to the social impacts of the Big Event. Issues of time loom large in other articles in this Special Issue as well. Some articles and commentaries in this issue point to another important phenomenon that should be studied more: The positive contributions that people who use drugs and other members of the population make towards helping other people in their communities during and after Big Events. Finally, this Commentary calls for more thought and research about an impending very Big Event, global climate change, and how it may exacerbate HIV, hepatitis C and other epidemics among people who use drugs and other members of their networks and communities.

Keywords :

• Big Events
• HIV
• hepatitis C
• revolutions
• wars
• economic crises
• climate change

THE AUTHORS

Samuel R. Friedman, PhD, US, is Director of Infectious Disease Research at National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. and the Director of the Interdisciplinary Theoretical Synthesis Core in the Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, New York City. He also is associated with the Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins University, and with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Dr. Friedman is an author of about 450 publications on HIV, hepatitis C, hepatitis C, STI, and drug use epidemiology and prevention. Honors include a NIDA Avant Garde Award (2012), the International Rolleston Award of the International Harm Reduction Association (2009), the first Sociology AIDS Network Award for Career Contributions to the Sociology of HIV/AIDS (2007), Senior Scholar Award of the Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco Section of the American Sociological Association (2010), and a Lifetime Contribution Award, Association of Black Sociologists (2005). He has published many poems in a variety of publications and a book of poetry (Seeking to make the world anew: Poems of the Living Dialectic. 2008. Lanham, Maryland: Hamilton Books).

Diana Rossi, DSW, Argentina, is a Social Worker and a youngsters’ social problems Specialist from the Buenos Aires University. Currently, she is professor and researcher of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. She is also a member of the board of directors and research coordinator of Intercambios Civil Association, an Argentinean non-governmental organization that does research and prevention concerning drug users and other people at high HIV risk. She collaborates with other national and international organizations, governmental and non-governmental agencies and universities. She is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Drug Policy. Since 2014, she integrates the board of the International Confederation of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Research Associations (ICARA). She is author of many papers, books and book chapters in national and international publications.