At the Bloomberg School’s Lighthouse project, researchers are deploying an innovative strategy for battling disease among the urban poor: making people who are most at risk part of the solution. A pair of studies aimed at injection-drug users and women at risk for HIV use an approach called peer outreach, in which community members receive risk-reduction training for HIV and other STDs. When participants then share these lessons with friends and neighbors, the training is effectively diffused through their social networks.

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