title: Police training to align law enforcement and HIV prevention: preliminary evidence from the field.
abstract: Having identified gaps in implementation of Rhode Island's syringe access law and police occupational safety education, public health and police professionals developed police training to boost legal knowledge, improve syringe access attitudes, and address needlestick injuries. Baseline data (94 officers) confirmed anxiety about needlestick injuries, poor legal knowledge, and occupational risk overestimation. Before training, respondents believed that syringe access promotes drug use (51%), increases likelihood of police needlestick injuries (58%), and fails to reduce epidemics (38%). Pretraining to posttraining evaluation suggested significant shifts in legal and occupational safety knowledge; changes in attitudes toward syringe access were promising. Training that combines occupational safety with syringe access content can help align law enforcement with public health goals. Additional research is needed to assess street-level effect and to inform intervention tailoring.
authors.affiliation: Division of Global Public Health, UCSD School of Medicine, La Jolla, CA 92093-0507, USA. leob@alumni.brown.edu
authors.forename: Leo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Beletsky
authors.forename: Alpna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Agrawal
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Moreau
authors.forename: Pratima
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: Nomi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Weiss-Laxer
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Heimer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000517:prevention & control*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008297:Male; D018671:Needle-Exchange Programs; D016272:Occupational Health; D016495:Police / Q000193:education*; D015980:Public Health Practice; D012237:Rhode Island