1.1 History

This guidance is offered to assist state and local health department human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention cooperative agreement grantees and directly funded community-based organization (CBO) grantees in planning, implementing, and evaluating HIV prevention case management (PCM). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides funding for individual-level, health education and risk-reduction activities, which include PCM. Previous guidelines for PCM are published in Guidelines for Health Education and Risk-Reduction Activities, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 1995. This revised guidance supersedes the 1995 PCM guidelines by further detailing essential components and protocols for PCM programs. (A glossary of terms is provided in Appendix A to assist the reader.)

HIV PCM is a client-centered prevention activity, which assists HIV seropositive and seronegative persons in adopting risk-reduction behaviors. PCM is intended for persons having or likely to have difficulty initiating or sustaining practices that reduce or prevent HIV transmission and acquisition. PCM provides intensive one-on-one prevention counseling and support. In addition, PCM provides assistance in accessing needed medical, psychological, and social services that affect clients' health and ability to change HIV-related risk-taking behavior.

Important issues have emerged from the experiences of those implementing the first PCM programs. As a result of questions about the range of services appropriate for PCM, the type and extent of counseling, and staffing qualifications, CDC staff believe revising programmatic guidance for this activity is important. This guidance provides minimum standards for PCM programs. Individual jurisdictions may develop more specific PCM standards for their own locale that go beyond the minimum standards specified in this document.

These standards and guidance for PCM were established after consultation among experts from HIV prevention programs, academia, and CDC. This revised guidance is also based on a literature review of the existing research (CDC 1997) and a systematic review of PCM programs [Purcell, DeGroff, and Wolitski, Submitted for Publication]. The experiences of organizations implementing PCM over the past three to five years have provided valuable information on which to base this revised guidance. Little outcome evaluation of PCM has been conducted; therefore, CDC bases this guidance, in part, on the review of research of other case management models.

Go to 1.2 Tenets of PCM