In the AIDS Library

These materials are available in the AIDS Library.  Come on down when we’re open and check them out!

• HCV/HIV Coinfection Information, by the American Liver Foundation
• Hepatitis & Liver Disease: What You Need to Know (Revised Edition), by Melissa Palmer, M.D.
• Hepatitis C, The First Year: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed (2^nd Edition), by Cara Bruce and Lisa Montanarelli
• The Hepatitis C Handbook, by Matthew Dolan
• HIV, Hepatitis C, and You: A Guide for Coinfected People, by The Body
• What You Need to Know About HIV/HCV Coinfection, by the National AIDS Treatment Advocacy Project

Info for People Living with Hepatitis C

For the basics, see:

• What I need to know about Hepatitis C, from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases – with easy-to-read text and lots of pictures
• Patient Education Resources, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – for printer-friendly color materials
• First Steps with Hepatitis C for the Newly Diagnosed, from the Hepatitis C Support Project

People with further questions can call 877-HELP-4-HEP, a national support line from The Support Partnership (TSP), a collaboration of four national hepatitis C organizations.

For info on HCV treatment

• Treatment Factsheets from HCV Advocate, including:
  • All FDA-Approved Medications
  • Predictors of Treatment Response
  • Managing Side Effects
• Herbal Dietary Supplements Glossary, from HCV Advocate – with special comments for people with liver problems

For help paying for treatment, see Project Inform’s list of Patient Assistance Programs.

For specific issues for people living with HCV, see:

• Hepatitis & Tattoos, from the Hepatitis C Support Project
• Diet and Nutrition for people living with HCV, from the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA)
• Alcohol and Hepatitis C, from the DVA
• Vaccinations of Adults with Hepatitis C Infection, from the Immunization Action Coalition

For info about HIV/HCV coinfection, see

• A Guide to HIV and Hep C Coinfection, from the Hepatitis C Support Project – colorful, printable, and aimed at patients
• HIV and Viral Hepatitis, from the CDC – including statistical info
• TheBody.com’s Ask the Experts Hepatitis and HIV Coinfection forum

For HCV info in language other than English, see

• A enormous amount of info in Spanish, from HCV Advocate
• Multilingual HIV and Hepatitis C Factsheets, from Multicultural HIV and Hepatitis Service – in Akan, Amharic, Arabic, Bosnian, Burmese, Chinese, Croatian, Greek, French, Indonesian, Italian, Khmer, Korean, Macedonian, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Shona, Somali, Swahili, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese
• Foreign Language Publications, also from HCV Advocate, in Bulgarian, Chinese, French, Hmong, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Somali
• HCV Info in Urdu, from the Hepatitis Trust in the United Kingdom

For issues around benefits, see A Guide to Hepatitis & Disability, from the Hepatitis C Support Project

For personal stories about HCV, see:

• HCV Advocate’s Personal Stories
• The Hepatitis C Trust’s Personal Stories
• Hepatitis Australia’s Treatment, Life, Hep C, and Me

Research, Provider Info, and More

To follow clinical research and other HCV news, see

• NAM AIDSmap’s Hepatitis C news page
• Hepatitis C Research and News
• HIVandHepatitis.com, for news focusing on co-infection
• Recent News in HCV Care, from Project Inform

For statistics, see:

• Hepatitis C Statistics and Surveillance, from the CDC – for in-depth statistics
• Hepatitis C FAQs for Health Professionals – for a narrative that puts those statistics in context

For provider info, see:

• HIV & Hepatitis Coinfections: Management & Treatment Guidelines, from the Hepatitis C Support Project
• Considerations for Antiretroviral Use in Patients with HIV/HCV Coinfection, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Testing Recommendations for Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection, from the CDC

For prevention with certain populations, see:

• Viral Hepatitis And Men Who Have Sex with Men, from the CDC
• Injection Drug Users and Viral Hepatitis, from the CDC

For multimedia, see:

• The CDC’s 5-minute interactive Hepatitis Risk Assessment
• The Patient Education Institute’s Hepatitis C Interactive Tutorial

The AIDS Library

of Philadelphia Fight produces a number of handouts and publications that are available to the public. One of our most recently updated publications is the list of Ongoing Groups at Philadelphia FIGHT.

This programming ranges from support groups to educational classes to recreational groups like Yoga or Creative Writing. Many are open to all; some are aimed at specific populations. Some require folks to be HIV-positive; some do not. Some require intake; for some, folks can just drop in.

Please view the Ongoing Groups at Philadelphia FIGHT publication [PDF]

To open the PDF, you need Adobe Reader.
Click here to download Adobe Reader for free.

Do you use apps on a smartphone or other mobile device? Did you know that there are thousands of great apps and mobile websites to learn about health, from practical tools like medication schedulers to comprehensive resources like the MedlinePlus Mobile site, from calorie counters to Narcotics Anonymous meeting finders to a game called “Catch the Condom”?

The AIDS Library and the Critical Path Project have created a series of guides to spread the word about how many great apps and mobile sites are available to be used by anyone with a mobile device. Below are six guides, each aimed at a different population:

• People Living With HIV/AIDS: APPlify Your Health – PLWHA
• Men Who Have Sex With Men: APPlify Your Health – MSM
• Women: APPlify Your Health – Women
• Youth: APPlify Your Health – Youth
• Healthcare Providers: APPlify Your Health – Providers
• Anyone interested in Addiction & Recovery: APPlify Your Health – Addiction & Recovery

Use these guides to learn more about apps and mobile sites that can help you learn more about health.

In addition, the Critical Path Project is offering a workshop on this issue, APPlify Your Health. Go to their website to learn more and get signed up.

The information below reflects what was current in the run-up to the election in Fall 2012.  Much of this information is now old, and it is likely to change based on policies and laws implemented before future elections.  We have decided to keep this information here for reference, but please be aware that some of it may be old.  Please contact the AIDS Library if you need assistance.

In the AIDS Library

There’s a special display about this law in the AIDS Library, just to your left when you walk in the door.  You can send folks by any time we’re open to pick up:

• Know Your Voting Rights: Pennsylvania, by the ACLU of Pennsylvania
• Need a Photo ID? I Can Help, by the office of State Senator Shirley M. Kitchen
• Specific Voter ID Issues for Homeless Voters, by the Committee of Seventy
• Voting Rights of Ex-Felons in Pennsylvania, by the ACLU of Pennsylvania
• Official voter registration forms
• Information about the free photo ID that PennDOT will give out, adapted from the PennDOT website
• Information about obtaining a birth certificate in Pennsylvania adapted from the PA Dept of Health website

Making Sure Your Clients (or You!) Can Vote

The Committee of Seventy has a comprehensive PA Voter ID Law website on this law, including:

• Education Guides for specific populations, including Seniors, Students, and the Homeless
• Palm cards on the ID law in Spanish, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Korean, and Vietnamese

The ACLU of Pennsylvania has a Voter ID Law website, which includes:

• A list of acceptable IDs for voting
• How to get a free PennDOT ID for voting
• A site where you can order free materials to educate people around  this law, as well as many PDFs of these materials that can be printed online

There are two hotlines to help people with this law:

• The Voter ID Coalition: 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683), answered live, Monday – Friday, 9am to 5pm
• The Department of State’s Voter ID Hotline:1-877-VotesPA (215-868-3772)

For folks without the necessary ID, PennDOT offers instructions for Obtaining a Free PennDOT Secure ID for Voting, as well as list of documents needed to get that ID.

Getting the documents needed to get an ID can be difficult.  Here are the government’s instructions on how to get:

• A birth certificate
• A social security card
• A certificate of U.S. Citizenship
• A certificate of U.S. Naturalization

More About Voting

For comprehensive instructions on how to register to vote, see the PA Department of State’s How to Register page.  To confirm that a person is registered to vote, see their Voter Registration Status page.

For folks who’ve been incarcerated, see the ACLU’s Voting Rights of Ex-Felons in PA

The Vote for Homes Coalition is running a free Voter Registration Training with special attention to this new law.  You can sign up here.

Learn More About the Voter ID Law

To learn more about the law and the issues surrounding it, see:

• The PA Department of State’s website about the law
• The text of the law itself
• Info about the lawsuit being brought against the state around the law

There’s been a lot of news coverage and opinions about the law.  Here are some highlights:

• Pa. Supreme Court Takes Up Voter ID Law This Week – recent news about the status of the law in the PA courts
• City, Groups Working to Spread Word on Voter ID Law – recent news on voter education around the law
• Corbett: No SNAFUs on Election Day because of Voter ID – with Governor Corbett’s take on the issue
• Partisan Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Wrongly Upheld by Court – for a more critical take
• A Whopping 43 percent of Philly Voters May Not Have Voter ID, According to New Data – for more on how this might affect Philadelphia
• Voter-ID Trial Puts Trans, Elderly Constituents on Stand –local LGBT-focused take on the issue
• Voting Rights Issue Heats Up in Battleground States Ohio, Pennsylvania – for some national context and comparison to our neighbor state to the west

Information about The International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012)

Webcasts of the many conference sessions will be available to watch online (not available until the sessions take place) via the Kaiser Family Foundation’s AIDS 2012 page.

The AIDS 2012 Website has lots of info including:

• The official promotional video
• Conference FAQs
• Bios of the plenary speakers
• Info about youth programming
• Info about the Global Village – for networking and sharing between organizations from all over the world
• How to organize a Conference Hub –  “mini conferences” held during or after the international conference by local organizations, which can be registered as late as September 15, 2012

The International AIDS Society, which organized the conference, has proposed The Washington D.C. Declaration to “turn the tide” against the epidemic, which you can read and sign.

For Science News Coverage from AIDS 2012, see NAM AIDSmap’s AIDS 2012 page, which includes:

• A sign-up for Email Bulletins with daily round-ups of science news from the conference
• Background Reading on major themes of the conference

For Community Events, see AIDS 2012 Reunion, which lists events from film screenings to dance parties, that aren’t officially part of the conference.

Facebook users can check out the conference’s Facebook page.

Twitter users can follow updates at:

• @AIDS2012 – for general updated
• @GVAIDS2012 – for updates about the Global Village
• @YouthAIDS2012 – for updates about Youth

There are many Youth Organizations with web presences about AIDS 2012, including:

• YouthForce
• DC Community Coalition
• HIV Young Leaders Fund
• Youth Rise

Many people have published Opinions & Commentary about AIDS 2012.  Here are a few that may be of interest:

• Countdown AIDS 2012 page – a collection of articles by the Prevention Justice Alliance, about Treatment Access, Social Justice, Queer & Trans Justice, HIV Criminalization and more
• A talk by Dr. Eric Goosby, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, at the Brookings Institution
• A blog post by Dr. Howard Koh, Assistant Secretary of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, with many official U.S. government statements and documents relevant to AIDS 2012
• Statements by the World YWCA, especially about women’s issues
• Brown Bag webinars by the National Latino AIDS Action Network on AIDS 2012

On July 24^th, there will be a huge Activist Mobilization called We Can End AIDS outside the conference.

• Read the platform
• Find out about free transportation to D.C. on the 24th

AIDS Activist Resources in the AIDS Library

The following books and movies cover the AIDS epidemic from the perspectives of activists and social critics.

BOOKS

• AIDS and Accusations: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, by Paul Farmer
• AIDS and the Policy Struggle in the United States, by Patricia D. Siplon
• AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism, ed. by Douglas Crimp
• AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Disease and Globalization, by Tony Barnett and Alan Whiteside
• The AIDS Pandemic: Complacency, Injustice and Unfulfilled Expectations, by Lawrence O. Gostin
• Ashamed to Die: Silence, Denial, and the AIDS Epidemic in the South, by Andrew K. Skerrit
• Body Count: Fixing the Blame for the Global AIDS Catastrophe, by Peter Gill
• The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics, by Cathy J. Cohen
• Fighting for our Lives: New York’s AIDS Community and the Politics of Disease, by Susan M. Chambre
• From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization, ed. by Benjamin Shepard and Ronald Hayduk
• Global AIDS Myths and Facts: Tools for Fighting the AIDS Pandemic, by Alexander Irwin, Joyce Millen, and Dorothy Fallows
• Globalizing AIDS, by Cindy Patton
• How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS, by Paula A. Treichler
• Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge, by Steven Epstein
• Infections and Inequalities, by Paul Farmer
• Inventing AIDS, by Cindy Patton
• Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS, by Anne-Christine d’Adesky
• Not in My Family: AIDS in the African-American Community, ed. by Gil L. Robertson IV
• Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, by Paul Farmer
• Policing Public Sex, ed. by Dangerous Bedfellows
• Righteous Dopefiends, by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg
• The Tragedy of Today’s Gays, by Larry Kramer
• Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men, by Gabriel Rotello
• Stitching a Revolution: The Making of an Activist, by Cleve Jones
• We Make Change: Community Organizers Talk About What They Do – and Why, by Kristin Layng Szakos & Joe Szakos
• When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa, by Didier Fassin
• Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival, by João Biehl
• Women, AIDS & Activism, by the ACT UP New York Women and AIDS Book Group
• Women, Families, and HIV/AIDS: A Sociological Perspective on the Epidemic in America, by Carole Campbell

MOVIES

• Pills Profits Protest: Chronicle of the Global AIDS Movement, directed by Anne-Christine D’Adensky, Shanti Avirgan, and Ann T. Rosetti
• Sex in an Epidemic, directed by Jean Carlomusto
• Voices from the Front, directed by Sandra Elgear, Robyn Hutt, and David Meieran [note: In-house Reference copy. This item does not circulate]

The History of AIDS Activism

There is no one history of AIDS activism.  For some tellings of the history, see

• Drugs Into Bodies! A History of AIDS Treatment Activism, from Body Positive
• The ACT UP Oral History Project (focusing on ACT UP New York), archived by the Harvard University Library
• ACT UP New York’s Capsule History, its Chronology, and other writings at its Documents webpage
• POZ Magazine founder Sean Strub’s Denver Principles Empowerment Index & A Brief History of the Empowerment Movement
• MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s report ACT UP Marks 25 Years of AIDS Activism

For many more personal accounts, see TheBody.com’s collection of HIV/AIDS Activist Profiles & Personal Accounts, and their collection of HIV/AIDS Activist Obituaries.

For further research, ACT UP New York has a bibliography of books and articles on the AIDS activism at their Research Info page.

For more information can on the history of AIDS activism in Philadelphia, see:

• Pascal Emmer’s essay on ACT UP Philly and “queer futurity” – note: not available in full text without database access, contact us for assistance
• The Gay History Wiki – note: as a wiki, the content of this website may not be verified

AIDS Activism Now

For news about AIDS activism, see TheBody.com’s webpage, HIV/AIDS Activism News.

There are many organizations that do activist work around the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  To learn about their actions, join them, or support their causes, see the contact information at their websites:

• ACT UP New York
• ACT UP Philadelphia
• AIDS Healthcare Foundation
• AIDS Policy Project
• HIV Prevention Justice Alliance
• National AIDS Housing Coalition
• National Association of People With AIDS
• Positive Women’s Network
• The POZ Army
• Treatment Action Group

Announcing The 2011 Discharge Planning Manual (DPM).  You may have seen copies at the Prison Summit during AIDS Education Month.  The DPM was created to supplement the AIDS Library’s ongoing prisoner correspondence program.  We reply to letters from prisoners with questions about HIV/AIDS, other health issues, reentry resources, and more.  Last year we answered 747 letters!  If you know someone incarcerated, please put them in touch with us and we can mail them vital information.

A note about who the DPM is for: The DPM contains general advice on reentry and specific resources for individuals coming out of prison to Philadelphia and the surrounding area.  It also contains an introduction to HIV/AIDS, tips for HIV-positive people being released from prison, and a medical summary form intended to help HIV-positive people maintain consistent care during their reentry.  As  such, the ideal audience for the DPM is an HIV-positive person returning to Philadelphia, but it contains content that would be of use to someone who is HIV-negative and returning to Philadelphia, or something who is HIV-positive and returning elsewhere.

Below you’ll see how to get a copy of the DPM, a list of prison & reentry resources available in the AIDS Library, a collection of links to the web presences of Philadelphia reentry organizations, and a variety of web resources around reentry.  If you have any questions about the information here, or about anything else, let me know.

How to Get the 2011 Discharge Planning Manual

The DPM can be accessed at The Discharge Planning Manual page of the Library’s website.  You can open it up and print it. Please also check out the Library’s Publications page to access our Resource Guide and other Library publications.

If you would like a DPM in booklet form, they are available in the AIDS Library or at FIGHT’s reentry program, the Institute for Community Justice.  We can mail a copy to anyone who requests one, as well as answer questions about discharge planning to the best of our ability.  Please contact the AIDS Library by phone (215-985-4851) or email (library@fight.org) to request a copy.

Prison & Reentry Resources in the AIDS Library

The following materials are available in the AIDS Library.  Come check us out!  (See our hours.)

• Putting the Bars Behind You: Instructor’s Resource Manual – by Ronald C. Mendlin & Marc Polonsky
• Networking & Interviewing for Jobs (from the Putting the Bars Behind You series) – by Ronald C. Mendlin & Marc Polonsky
• But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry – by Jeremy Travis
• When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry – by Joan Persilia
• The Job-Loss Recovery Guide: A Proven Program for Getting Back to Work Fast! – by Lynn Joseph
• Best Resumes & Letters for Ex-Offenders – by Wendy S. Enelow and Ronald L. Krannich
• Job Hunting Tips for People with Hot and Not-So-Hot Backgrounds: 150 Smart Tips That Can Change Your Life – by Ron and Caryl Krannich
• Resume, Application, and Letter Tips for People with Hot and Not-So-Hot Backgrounds: 185 Tips for Landing the Perfect Job – by Ron and Caryl Krannich
• Reentry Today: Programs, Problems, and Solutions – by the American Correctional Institution
• Behind Bars: Surviving Prison – by Jeffrey Ian Ross & Stephen C. Richards
• Celling America’s Soul: Torture and Transformation in Our Prisons and Why We Should Care – by Judith Trustone
• The Dhamma Brothers: East Meets West in the Deep South – a film about “an overcrowded maximum-security prison in Alabama, dramatically changed by the influence of an ancient meditation program”

Reentry in Philadelphia

The DPM covers all major reentry service providers in Philadelphia in more detail than I’ll go in to in this email.  For quick reference, though, here are the websites of some useful organizations.  More information, programming, and contact info can be found at each website.

• Philadelphia FIGHT’s Institute for Community Justice
• PA Prison Society’s Reentry Services
• Kingdom Care Reentry Network
• R.I.S.E – The Mayor’s Office of Reintegration Services for Ex-Offenders
• Reconstruction, Inc.
• JEVS Program for Offenders
• Impact Services Corp. Reentry Services
• X-Offenders for Community Empowerment
• Turning the TIDE

In previous Reference Librarian blog posts I’ve covered two topics central to reentry.  Take a look at them for much more info on Job Training and Recovery (including how to get in to Drug & Alcohol Recovery programs).

And for the resources and info about a third important reentry piece, check out the AIDS Library’s Housing Guide.

Online Resources on Reentry

Some of these resources are aimed at the people being released.  Some are aimed at those creating programs for those people.  Some could be used by both populations.

The National H.I.R.E. Network has a website with a lot of information, including:

• Fact sheets and FAQs on Criminal Records and Employment
• A survey of Model Practice to Promote the Employment of People With Criminal Records
• Advice on Completing Employment Applications with a Criminal Record
• A selection of Employer Resources, encouraging employers to hire formerly incarcerated people

The National Institute of Corrections collects a lot of useful publications on its Offender Employment webpage, including:

• a Job-Hunting Guide for People With Less-Than-Ideal Backgrounds
• an Employment Information Handbook

Public/Private Ventures has a webpage of Reentry Publications that can be downloaded freely online, including:

• Mentoring Former Prisoners: A Guide for Reentry Programs
• From Options to Action: A Roadmap for City Leaders to Connect Formerly Incarcerated Individuals to Work
• Going to Work with a Criminal Record: Lessons from the Fathers at Work Initiative

The Legal Action Center has a lot of great content including:

• A useful summary of legal roadblocks called “What’s the Law”, searchable by subject (Parenting, Public Assistance, Voting, etc.) and by state.  Here’s a direct link to the Pennsylvania State Profile.
• A collection of Advocacy Toolkits to Combat Legal Barriers for Individuals Leaving Prisons and Jails (toolkits, that is, for people combating policies, not for people getting their individual needs met)
• The issue-by-issue, state-by-state (and federal) data is also analyzed in a 2009 report After Prison: Roadblocks to Reentry.

The U.S. Department of Justice Reentry website has:

• Local Reentry Resources by state
• Publications of Reentry Research sorted by topics like Health, Housing, Substance Abuse

The Council of State Governments Justice Center Reentry Policy Council website has:

• An online Reentry Policy Newsletter
• Reports on Succesful Reentry Programs around the country
• A wepage collecting Reentry Policy Publications on a wide range of issues

The National Reentry Resource Center has:

• Information about the 2008 Second Chance Act
• Collections of popular and scholarly articles, broken down by Reentry Topic, including Employment, Housing, Substance Abuse, Juveniles, and more

The Urban Institute has a webpage collecting some Reentry Research papers, including a report on Partnering With Jails to Improve Reentry: A Guidebook for Community-Based Organizations

The PBS series Frontline has a documentary called The Released that can be watched online.  It focuses on reentry and the cycle of recidivism among people with mental illnesses.

This installment of my reference series is narrower in scope than recent installments like Discharge Planning and Reentry, HIV/AIDS Education, and Trangender Resources.  But it deals with a tricky line of question that the AIDS Library sometimes gets: “How likely is [some behavior] to transmit HIV?”

This question is tricky for a few reasons.  First, people often ask for a percentage of risk for some sexual act, but in reality a number like that can’t be calculated (and anyway the risk is defined by more than just the specific act).  Second, we want to encourage caution in the face of HIV, but we don’t want HIV-negative folks to fear HIV-positive folks.  Third, we know that the safest choice is usually total abstinence from risky behavior, but if we believe in harm reduction we want to give individuals answers that “meet them where they’re at,” not answers that preach things that won’t work for everyone.  As a result of all these issues we have the potential for confusion and mixed messages when many clients just want to hear “yes, that’s risky” or “no, that isn’t risky.”

So the information below collects resources to help craft good answers to these how-risky-is-it questions.

Explaining Why Risk Statistics Aren’t Precise

As with so many topics, AIDS Info Net gives a clearly written introduction, How Risky Is It?, which includes a section explaining “What the Numbers Mean,” explaining that “these calculations only give a general idea of risk.”

Go Ask Alice, the Columbia Health Services excellent health Q&A site has a good response to someone Confused About HIV Transmission Statistics, which does a good job of explaining why transmission statistics are imprecise, what some of the factors that make a single sexual act more or less risky, and that the virus doesn’t “jump over to the other side” as soon as it gets a chance.

For those more interested in academic epidemiology, the University of California San Francisco’s HIV InSite hosted an interesting roundtable discussion on The Risk of HIV Infection Through Receptive Oral Sex, with full transcript online.  In addition to covering receptive oral sex risk, the researchers discuss the many challenges (even more than I listed above!) to quantifying infection risk.

Estimates of Risk by Behavior

HIV InSite has a page listing Safer-Sex Methods, sorted by No-Risk, Extremely Low-Risk, Low-Risk, and High-Risk Practices.

HIV Insite also publishes, in somewhat technical language, the HIV Risks Associated with Specific Sexual Practices, broken down to:

• Penile-Vaginal Sex
• Penile-Anal Sex
• Rectal Douching and Rectal Fisting
• Oral-Penile Sex
• Oral-Vaginal Sex
• Oral-Anal Sex

HIV InSite also fully footnotes the studies and research that their text is based on, for those who want to go deeper in to the research about risk behavior.

For a wider range of behaviors, The Body archives the questions it answers about HIV Risks From The Body’s “Ask the Experts” Forums, and break the questions down by topics:

• Anal Intercourse
• Anal-Oral Contact (Rimming)
• Bestiality
• Blood Test
• Docking
• Fingering
• Fisting
• Frottage
• Kissing
• Lap Dance
• Masturbation
• Menstruation
• Oral Sex
• Sex Toys
• Transgender
• Vaginal Intercourse
• Vomit
• Watersports (Urine)

Specific Risk Issues

STIs – The likelihood of HIV transmission is increased by the presence of other sexually transmitted infections.  The CDC has a webpage, The Role of STD Detection and Treatment in HIV Prevention, which explains this.  The page also includes a link to All Their STD Fact Sheets.

Condoms – Some questions about possible risk turn out to be questions about condoms effectiveness.  Here are some sources of information about this issue:

• The CDC on Condom Effectiveness, including brief summaries on how effectiveness is studied
• Advocates for Youth on Condom Effectiveness, with more detail about effectiveness studies, including references to the academic articles on condom effectiveness
• Catholics for Choice: Do Condoms Prevent AIDS, a pro-condom article written by and for Catholics attempting to reconcile safer sex with their Church hierarchy’s opposition to any birth control.

Antiretroviral Therapy – If an HIV-positive person is in treatment, they are less likely to be able to transmit the virus to someone else. This may of particular interest to people in serodiscordant relationships (where one person is positive and the other negative).  A few resources on this topic:

• The CDC’s has a report explaining the science behind this and some of the statistical estimates, Effect of Antiretroviral Therapy on Risk of Sexual Transmission of HIV Infection and Superinfection.
• AVERT has a more readable HIV Transmission and Antiretroviral Therapy Briefing Sheet.

• And for those who really want to go deep into the science involved, several researchers have published a 44-page text that can be downloaded free, Antiretroviral Therapy for Prevention of HIV Transmission in HIV-discordant Couples.

Circumcision – Male circumcision significantly reduces the risk of HIV acquisition by men during penile-vaginal sex.

• The CDC has a page on Male Circumcision and Risk for HIV Transmission that explains this, but is a bit technical.
• This AVERT page covers the issue in a more readable manner.
• This Scientific American article offers an interesting report on the research on this issue, which is somewhat controversial.

Unknown HIV Status – The CDC estimates that 21% of HIV-positive people aren’t aware of their infection (others have put this number even higher).  That CDC report is very technical, however, so try this NPR story for a clear explanation of the 21% statistic.

Injection Drug Use – Sharing needles is a major method of transmitting HIV, but by definition no statistics exist for just how risky any individual injection is.  Here are a few useful resources on IDU risk:

• This Lancet study, which estimates that 16% of injection drug users are HIV positive
• The CDC’s National Prevention Information Network’s Injection Drug Users / Substance Abusers collection, which aggregated articles and research on IDU and HIV/STI risk
• AVERT’s Injecting Drugs, Drug Users, HIV & AIDS page, which puts IDU risk in context

Risk Non-Issues – For the people who want to know how risky it is to play contact sports or get bitten by mosquitoes, refer to the CDC’s HIV Transmission page and AIDS InfoNet’s HIV Myths & Misunderstandings page, which give nice clear NOs to some questions that still come up after all these years.