The "Dirty Work" of Public Health

The working paper explores the intersection of public health and HIV/AIDS discourse and policy amidst shifts in governance as well as the resilient stigma associated with the epidemic. HIV/ADS is therefore used as an anlytical lens through which to view the tensions between continuity and chage in public health. AIDS is regarded as both a signifier of older more coercive traditions in public health and as a catalyst for creating new modalities of right-based public health planning and decision-making. Exploring "what works" in responses to HIV/AIDS therefore foregrounds the need for a contextual politics of the epidemic and public health. Reference is made to experiences from the "West" with sesific country case studies from Brazil, Russia and South Africa.