Cost-effectiveness of community-level approaches to HIV prevention: A review

Effective community-level HIV prevention strategies have the potential to reach large numbers of at-risk individuals at relatively small per-capita costs, and therefore to be highly cost-effective. We review the published literature on the cost-effectiveness of community-level HIV prevention interventions, including five studies of sexual behavior change interventions and seven risk reduction programs for injection drug users. Overall, these studies indicate that community-level strategies can be very cost-effective, and in many cases, actually save society money by averting the need for costly HIV/AIDS medical care.