In first grade my class was assigned to design a picture showing what we liked about our community. Some of the artwork was chosen to be made into tiles and placed in downtown Cleveland. Mine was one of them.
| AIDS Correlations in Cleveland | |
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In first grade my class was assigned to design a picture showing what we liked about our community. Some of the artwork was chosen to be made into tiles and placed in downtown Cleveland. Mine was one of them.
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Latino communities are known for their strong stigmatization of HIV and AIDS which greatly affects the spread of knowledge and protection from the virus. Larger proportions of all Hispanic populations have been recorded as having less AIDS related knowledge than non-Hispanic groups (24). In one study, being Hispanic had a negative effect on knowledge about AIDS and less than 5% of Hispanics reported talking about AIDS with anyone at their health clinic, even after being infected (6). The same study recorded that 40% of Latinos did not know that condoms used during sex lowers the risk of AIDS. Latinos were also least likely to use a newspaper (6) and in a study investigating unmarried adults both Spanish speaking men and women believed that there was little they would do to avoid AIDS (34). Hispanic women have also been found to have a worse physical well being than men (B5). It is clear that in order to approach the solution of eliminating AIDS it is necessary to increase education levels through means that are easily accessible and reachable to the Puerto Rican population in Cleveland.