In countries ranging from the United States, with some of the world’s best medicine and health care technology, to Senegal, where more than 50 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, marginalized groups—injecting drug users, sex workers, men who have sex with men, prisoners, and ethnic minorities—are frequently excluded from the design, implementation, and evaluation of national HIV/AIDS policies and programs.

The Public Health Watch report Civil Society Perspectives on HIV/AIDS Policy documents the varying degrees and forms that stigma and discrimination against marginalized groups can take in five developed and developing countries: Nicaragua, Senegal, Ukraine, the United States, and Vietnam.

Public Health Watch researchers engaged in two years of monitoring involving desktop research, interviews, and consultative meetings with stakeholders to assess the five countries’ progress in making HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care services more widely and equitably available. The results of the research make it clear that national governments and international agencies must collaborate more effectively with these groups in order to hear their concerns and address their needs.