Barham and colleagues¹ provide a valuable review of cost-effectiveness studies of one to one sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention interventions; one to one interventions are those delivered to one person at a time, such as screening or individual counselling (as opposed to group counselling, community-level interventions, and so on). Their review summarises the findings of 55 cost-effectiveness studies, most of which focus on chlamydia and HIV prevention interventions. A more comprehensive version of their review providing methodological details and a listing of hundreds of other cost-effectiveness studies excluded from their review is available online.

One to one STI prevention interventions were found to be cost effective in a vast majority of the studies in the review. This abundance of evidence for the cost effectiveness of one to one interventions adds significant support to the idea that risk reduction counselling should be part of the standard of STI care.^2,3

Barham and colleagues¹ rate the quality of each study included in the review. These …