Critical Analysis of

 Health Issues: AIDS

According to the Westchester Department of Health every two days another Westchester County resident is diagnosed with AIDS, and every six days a resident dies (5) and on  a larger scale there exists a disproportionate amount of  people affected in communities of African Americans. For example even though Westchester County’s African American population is 13.6% within the community they account for 49.5 % of cumulative AIDS cases and 52 % of people living with AIDS (7)

 To address the problem of AIDS, Westchester County as a whole has a range of programs to try to prevent and treat AIDS in a fashion that will eventually lower AIDS and HIV cases in the areas. For Westchester County, according to the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute we find out that there are several different programs. In total there are 12 programs listed. Of these 12 programs two are located in Yonkers, one in New Rochelle, and two in Mount Vernon. The programs offered in Yonkers are The Sharing Community Inc., and Valentine Lane Family Practice. These two programs offer Rapid Oral Fluid and Blood as a test method, receive walk ins, appointments, and evening hours, are bilingual (Spanish and English) and lastly for The Sharing Community, Inc. offers its services free of charge, whereas Valentine Lane Family Practice offers services free of charge or reduce fee based on client income,  but also accept payments. They do not allow anonymous testing though. New Rochelle has a program called Westchester County Department of Health. This program offer both Rapid blood testing, Walking hours, Appointment, and evening hours. These two programs are bilingual (Spanish and English) as well as offers free of charge based on client income, accept government  programs, accept third party private insurance, and accept out of the pocket payment. Lastly Mount Vernon has an organization called Mount Vernon Neighborhood Health Center, which offers blood, and Rapid Oral Fluid testing, allows walk ins, appointments, evening hours, and weekend hours, this organization offers six different languages, English, Spanish, French, Creole, Chinese, and Russian, they accept any type of fee. Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, Inc. – Mount Vernon is the second organization available within Mount Vernon, it offers Blood, Rapid Blood, Rapid Oral Fluid test methods, accept Walk ins, Appointments, Evening Hours, and Weekend Hours, there are both English and Spanish speakers and provides everything for free. Both though do not have anonymous HIV testing. (5)

Within Mount Vernon there is an identified gap in mobilizing black communities to raise awareness and change sexual and drug use norm. Curious to learn more, I called these organizations and asked about their programs. While talking to the secretary Danny, it came to my attention that although he was very informative, there was a gap in one of the programs he mentioned called the OUTREACH program. OUTREACH is comprised of volunteers from the Mount Vernon AIDS organizations who go out into the community with the aim of educating “everyday people”. Danny went on to explain that they try to educate as many people as they can in order to promote AIDS awareness, as Danny continued speaking it occurred to me that of all the places he had listed that OUTREACH visited, none of them was a school within Mount Vernon. Taking not of my observation I again questioned Danny about it and in a confused manner told me that he actually did not know, but assumed that in order for OUTREACH to go speak in a middle school they must make the first move to contact them.

Because the youth is our future, and young people are easily impressed upon with ideas, my idea was to create an extension of OUTREACH that would concentrate on educating Middle School children as they are taking health class. By educating these children with each coming new generation of children, they would be aware of what AIDS is, and how it is contracted. By knowing more about AIDS the new generations would also have a less stigmatized view of people with AIDS. In turn, with less stigma within the community, people with AIDS, in this case the prevalent African American community would feel more comfortable in going to get help about AIDS.

The school that I would first implement my plan on would be Davis Middle school, located on 350 Gramatan Ave. Mt. Vernon. By talking to the school principal Dr. Judith Kronin, I would propose an after school program comprised of several sessions that work in conjunction with students who are taking a Health class and the OUTREACH program to raise AIDS awareness. Since the group most apposed to this proposal would probably be the parents of the students, prior to the commencement of the after school programs, PTA meetings would be set up to educate the parents on AIDS, and explain why it is vital for the future generations to be aware of AIDS. Since this program would simply be an extension of the OUTREACH program, if enough funding were provided no more would be needed. If funding were to be needed within the program it can be obtained by advocating to politicians, policy makers and community leaders at the municipal and state level.

            Within the sessions provided for both the students and teachers a number of issues would be addressed. Mostly various forms of stigma would be targeted, and taught along with the science behind AIDS, where and when one could get tested, and how to prevent AIDS (6). For example some forms of stigma that can potentially be discussed could be the fact that as soon as one sees an HIV infected person, people who have stigma believe that they must have been promiscuous, homosexual, drug users, sick with STD’s, dirty, prisoners (4), or immigrants. Specifically, students can learn that barriers like legal status, linguistic problems, fear of the American health system, misunderstanding about modes of transmission of HIV, and lack of awareness about antiretroviral treatment. By taking this step to educate the young we begin the steps for becoming a more aware community: first the issue is identified, defined by the community, interviewed, scored to determine its effectiveness, developed through strategies and workshops and lastly we end up in community change (2) By influencing the youth of today, one can cause a chain reaction where through the education of the youth within one community, there is first of all newly found AIDS awareness that would further prevent the transmission of AIDS, and secondly, stigma would be lessened since students will be learning about the people that have contracted AIDS they will not be too quick to judge a person who has AIDS. Subjects like serostatus, unsafe practices and friends/partners with HIV/ AIDS would no longer be ignored and treated as an untouchable subject.  The greater sense of unity within the community, the greater sense there is of identity the individual has with the community there would be.