title: [Individuals, structures, and risks: an overview of primary HIV prevention in Portugal].
abstract: This article debates the principal guidelines and procedures that shape HIV/AIDS prevention in Portugal, focusing on risk reduction in the two major scenarios for spread of the epidemic: sexuality and injection drug use. The analysis views the risks of infection as expressions of practices that are densely interwoven into social structures and cultural frameworks. Based on this conception, the article seeks to evaluate and understand the extent to which preventive strategies take a broad and integrative underlying approach by including individuals and their circumstances. Meanwhile, the study identifies some of the main structural constraints impeding the achievement of more favorable conditions for minimizing risks and adopting safe behaviors. These analytical exercises include not only policy and program guidelines, but also processes in daily reality, showing how the non-implementation of measures already guaranteed by law poses powerful structural barriers to HIV prevention.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Estudos Transdisciplinares para o Desenvolvimento, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal.
authors.forename: Octávio
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Sacramento
mesh_terms: D000163:Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000635:transmission; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006266:Health Education; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011174:Portugal; D011314:Preventive Health Services; D011322:Primary Prevention; D012307:Risk Factors