AIDS is a global public health crisis of unparalleled proportions, yet too often the most vulnerable and marginalized populations are neglected and underrepresented in approaches to treating and preventing HIV/AIDS. To fill this gap, OSI’s Public Health Program works to support stigmatized and socially excluded groups like Roma and ethnic minorities, injecting drug users, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender individuals, sex workers, and homeless and incarcerated people.

The Public Health Program advocates for and provides grants to efforts to reform discriminatory or exclusionary policies; expand the availability of HIV treatment and prevention services like needle exchange and opiate substitution treatment for people who use drugs; increase civil society participation around issues of sexual health and rights; promote the inclusion of palliative care in HIV/AIDS funding strategies; and protect the human rights of HIV-positive people.

In 2007, OSI released a Public Health Watch report, Civil Society Perspectives on HIV/AIDS Policy, that documents the varying degrees and forms that stigma and discrimination against marginalized groups can take 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. In each of the developing and developed countries featured in the report, the OSI researchers found that marginalized groups are frequently excluded from the design, implementation, and evaluation of national HIV/AIDS policies and programs.