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In 2014, Scott County, Indiana was the site of a now infamous HIV outbreak linked to intravenous drug use. Is history repeating itself in Cabell County, West Virginia?

It’s a subject tackled in a new blog post for the Bill of Health blog of Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center by IU McKinney Law student Emily Beukema, Visiting Assistant Professor Aila Hoss, and Nicolas Terry, Hall Render Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Hall Center for Law and Health and a permanent blogger at Bill of Health.

 “This county, the state’s third largest, has reported more than 70 new HIV cases since January 2018, primarily among drug users sharing syringes. This new cluster is on trajectory to be the largest outbreak since Scott County which had a cluster of 215 new HIV infections between 2011 and 2014. And, once again, inadequate harm reduction programs seem to be front and center in the developing story,” the authors wrote.

Professors Terry and Hoss, as well as Beukema, have been working on legal and policy best practices in response to the substance use crisis as part of IU’s Addictions Crisis Grand Challenges Project.

Professor Terry serves on the Grand Challenges Scientific Leadership Team and is a principal investigator on addictions law and policy Grand Challenge grants, while Hoss is an IU Grand Challenge Fellow. Beukema, a dual-degree student earning both a juris doctorate and a Master of Public Health degree from the Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI, has also been part of the project team since work began in Spring 2018.