Academy for Educational Development

It has been nearly three decades since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and current treatments make it possible for individuals with HIV/AIDS to live longer, more productive lives.  Highly active antiretroviral therapy is no cure, but treatment advances continue to improve, making HIV/AIDS seem more like a chronic disease.

However, even though HIV testing and effective medications are largely accessible to Americans, HIV/AIDS-related stigma and discrimination continue to form a barrier to accessing life-saving treatments for too many Americans. 

An HIV/AIDS diagnosis often elicits such strong reactions that it may prevent individuals from getting tested and obtaining care. An AED initiative is seeking ways to end that paralyzing stigma, which can be particularly acute in racial, ethnic, and low-income communities.  With support from the Ford Foundation, AED is assisting and strengthening local and national organizations to fight HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination among different ethnic populations.

“To reduce the stigma and discrimination people living HIV/AIDS face every day, we need to affect major changes in societal social norms and beliefs—especially in how we address sexual health, sexual behavior, substance use, and homosexuality among specific racial and ethnic communities,” said Frank Beadle de Palomo, senior vice president, and director of Global HIV/AIDS, and the AED Center on AIDS & Community Health.

For example, he said, homosexuality is so stigmatized in some cultures that they don’t even have a word for it. “In order for all people with HIV/AIDS, regardless of their sexual orientation, to be able to live without the cloud of stigma hanging over their heads, discussions about risk factors have to be open and honest, not hidden beneath layers of shame,” said Beadle de Palomo.

“Communities need to engage in frank discussions about sexual behaviors and drug use in order to embrace prevention without fear and judgment so that we can finally break the silence that continues to kills people,” he said.

Washington, D.C. has the highest rates of HIV and AIDS in the nation, especially among African Americans. To address this issue AED worked with Us Helping US, a local agency that is at the forefront of confronting AIDS-related stigma among African American men who have sex with men in the nation’s capital.

To strengthen the organization, AED helped them develop a tool to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of their programs, and trained staff on how to collect and interpret data.

On a national level, AED and the National Council of La Raza are partnering on an effort to create culturally relevant, peer-based stigma-prevention kits to fight stigma in Latino communities. After developing, testing, and evaluating the bilingual kits, they will be distributed nationwide through the Latino-advocacy organization’s network of community-based affiliate groups.

“Different communities require different approaches, however the underlying goal is to make larger, structural changes to truly decrease the stigma that helps to fuel the epidemic and ruins so many lives,” said Beadle de Palomo.