the HIV/aids prevention organization
The Influence of...
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My plan is to establish an HIV/AIDS prevention organization that focuses on IDUs within the city by preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Through prior research, IDU has been shown to be the leading factor of AIDS cases in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Concentrating on the Lazarus House Ministries, which is a group of homeless shelters, may be the best way to approach the IDUs. It would be feasible to use the homeless shelter for HIV/AIDS prevention because there is an already large population of people there, awaiting the information on prevention. Moreover, individuals that are homeless, as study shows, are more than likely to be IDUs (23). Factors that are leading to failure in AIDS education include the method of acknowledging that AIDS education is pertinent to everyone and not only individuals at high risk. Addressing the general community allows fear of stigma, disclosure, familial involvement, and lack of knowledge about HIV/AIDS hidden from the criticizing society (29, 35).
Aside from informing the community as a whole about HIV/AIDS, the organization should meet with the people of the homeless center on a weekly base. Allowing too large time intervals between meetings would risk missing the people that enter and leave the shelter on a regular basis. Moreover, meeting too often, such as every day of the week, might make the people annoyed and feel as if the information is repetitive and useless. Meeting with the homeless people, as well as walk-ins who want to participate in the meetings, on a once a week average keep the people interested in what they’re learning. During each gathering, a range of information should be covered. Specialists should teach the people what is HIV/AIDS, and the difference between the two terms. People may lose hope when they’re diagnosed with HIV, but fail to recognize that it may not have progressed to AIDS, and there are HIV treatments. The people should be taught effectively all manners in which HIV/AIDS can be transmitted. This allows for the people to give second thoughts to their actions and high risk behaviors they may take part in, in order to care for their bodies better.
This HIV/AIDS prevention organization should not only hold seminars that inform the people, but provide them with different resources. A syringe exchange program (SEP) should be followed with each weekly meeting. Having specialists teach the people how to use the syringes properly and safely allows the IDUs to at least be safe during injection. Although the seminars should discourage drug use, if the people are going to practice it then they should know how to do so safely. Disposing of syringes should be covered during the seminar and when the IDUs exchange for their clean syringe. The more syringes that are used and left out in the street the more desperate IDUs may use them nonetheless. In addition, HIV testing should be administered during these seminars, which provides the people with a weekly check-up on their status. Although the fast test or Orasure test have negative consequences such as false positives, positive rapid HIV tests are preliminary, and must be confirmed by a viral load test or Western-blot test (36). At each meeting, the organization should provide a vast amount of food to feed the people as well as attract newcomers. Furthermore, besides the Lazarus House Ministries already being the most popular homeless shelters in the area, offering food for both the homeless as well as the public would do a great deal of positive publicity for the organization.
Since the center is in only one place, a nightly van that goes into the parts of the city where high risk behaviors take place is effective. The van’s purpose is to not only go into places where people practice high risk behaviors, but to provide a confidential visit for people too proud to attend the homeless center, or are unable to get there. On Sunday, Mondays and Thursdays the van should station itself around Beacon St. and the more southern side of the city where drug users do exchanges. On Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, the van should station itself near Lawrence St., where some prostitution takes place and drugs are exchanged. Since syringe acquisition, collection, and distribution cannot portray a representation of the behavior of IDUs, so it would thus be effective for the van to move around and about the designated areas (37). The van should being it’s drive at 9pm and go until about 2am each day, which yields only 5 hours each day. This could be considered full time employment (35 hours/week) and may provide an easier mean of work for specialists and nurses. Attending to a person at a time, the van should provide confidential counseling on STDs and HIV/AIDS prevention, free condoms and other safer-sex supplies, an exchange of syringes and rapid test for those who want them. Counseling is an essential quality of the organization since IDUs do not often consider HIV prevention of highest importance due to poverty, addiction, homelessness, mental illness, and depression (23). Providing immediate counseling also allows the clients to acknowledge that the program is not out to take their money, but to help them live their daily lives.
The HIV/AIDS prevention organization poses for an alternate route in humanitarian as well as financial benefits. Syringe exchange programs are cost effective (38), and the funds to provide people with condoms, HIV tests, and other resources does not pose a grand problem. The Think HIV (2002) program in Massachusetts offered voluntary HIV counseling, testing, and referral routinely to patients entering urgent care centers for 12 months. The purpose of the program is to find how bad AIDS has become by examining HIV testing reports from four urgent care centers. The program cost for 2002 was $349,400 for the newly diagnosed patients. For the year of 2002, Of the 3,068 patients tested, the program found an HIV seroprevalence of 2.0%, which is a high rate considering that this prevalence was accounting only for those who were tested (35). If a federal/state grant was proposed to found an HIV/AIDS prevention organization, the outcome would be extraordinary. The cost for the van, food, medical supplies, presentations for the meetings, and the few staff needed for the presentations and van drives is a minimal, which makes this plan plausible. If this organization were to be practiced in an organized fashion, it would slowly reduce the AIDS rate in Lawrence, Massachusetts.