From the start of the AIDS epidemic there have been calls for greater solidarity between affected groups and communities, and public health services. This can be seen both in the move towards healthy alliances in health service work, and in the demands of AIDS activists worldwide. This text brings together specially selected papers addressing these and related themes given at the Eighth Conference on Social Aspects of AIDS held in London in late 1995. Among the issues examined are profession and policy; the heightened vulnerability of groups such as women and younger gay men; and issues of drug use, disability and HIV prevention.

Positive women and heterosexuality - problems of disclosure of serostatus to sexual partners; suffering in silence? public visability, private secrets and the social construction of AIDS; opportunity lost - HIV/AIDS, disability and legislation; AIDS policy communities in Australia; constraints in the development of sexual health alliances; I don't know what you need to know - a peer sexual health project by young disabled people; doubly serviant? women drug injectors and their use of drug problem services; sexual debut and the risk of HIV infection among young gay men in Norway; HIV services for women in East London - the match between provision and needs; towards targetted HIV prevention - an ethnographic study of young gay men in London; identities and gay young men's decision-making; state sponsored gayness - ghettoization as a response to HIV/AIDS; sexual negotiation strategies of HIV positive gay men - a qualitative approach.