Prevention services and interventions work with at-risk people and populations. Research in this area aims to understand the circumstances that put people at risk and to develop services to address those conditions before HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV) infection occur.
There are three major types of prevention interventions:
- Behavioural interventions aim to help people make individual changes that reduce their risk
- Structural interventions aim to address systemic barriers that limit the ability of particular populations to protect themselves, often addressing social drivers of health
- Biomedical approaches use tools such as pre and post exposure prophylaxis, vaccines and microbicides to help reduce risk
Increasingly prevention programs are being developed that combine one or more of these strategies.