Ethnography and illegal drug users: The efficacy of outreach as HIV prevention

The unique, influential, and successful characteristics of “outreach” as a risk‐behavior‐reduction intervention among active drug users is examined. Specifically, we argue that outreach workers’ performance is the distinctive and strategic use of communication both to overcome drug users’ systemic estrangement and then to teach HIV risk‐prevention behaviors. The article provides an ethnographic description of four outreach workers’ abilities to locate and recruit hidden populations, and to establish trust necessary to engage members of those populations in risk‐reduction interventions. The essay closes with theoretical conclusions and implications relevant to current public discussions on outreach and federal HIV expenditures.