LOCAL LIQUOR merchants will soon be dispensing advice about disease prevention along with pints of vodka if a pilot intervention program just started by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Atlanta, Ga, proves effective.
Seeking to make serious cuts in the ever-rising incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the nation's inner cities, the CDC is "reorienting its prevention and treatment programs in a major way," according to Willard Cates, Jr, MD, director of the agency's Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases. One aspect of the proposed multifaceted approach involves community demonstration projects that have been devised by Kevin O'Reilly, PhD, and CDC colleagues to stop transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). These are one of four large groups of projects the group handles.
"If these interventions work," says Cates, "that will not only help reduce HIV transmission, but they'll have spin-off effects in showing how we can also reduce