Understanding the promise: considering the experiences of women living with HIV to maximize effectiveness of HIV prevention technologies.

Background: The United States' response to HIV was designed primarily to meet the needs of single men without dependent children and its prevention strategies focused primarily on individual behavior change with little attention to the social, cultural, and economic factors fueling HIV risk, especially among indigent and marginalized women. In 2012, the President's Advisory Council called for an updating of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy's Implementation Plan to "achieve specific, targeted and measurable goals for reducing HIV incidence and … improving health care access and health outcomes for women living with HIV."

Outcome Measures: Women living with HIV and those at greatest risk of HIV generally live side by side in the same communities and under the same conditions, separated in status only by a positive HIV test and its consequences.