Changes in uptake of condoms or injecting equipment

One way of measuring whether an intervention is working is to look at changes in the uptake of condoms or injecting equipment over time. This form of measurement is relatively easy to carry out, since it only involves monitoring the output of a project. However, there is no guarantee that the output of a project can be related to changes in behaviour or incidence.

For example, whilst a project may experience a 25% increase in demand for condoms over the course of a year, there may be no change in the incidence of gonorrhoea in the locality. This might be due to the fact that individuals are ceasing to obtain condoms from any other source, and relying on a project to provide for their total needs. Or the increase might be explained by an increasing uptake of condoms by those who travel in from other districts and who use sexual health services in other districts. Interventions targeted at gay men carried out by individual London Primary Care Trusts which are measured locally have been a good example of this problem.¹ It may even be because the provision of condoms contributes to greater risk behaviour, as seen in one Ugandan study.²

A variant of uptake measurements is the assessment of returns of injecting equipment to syringe-exchange projects.