AIDS education is a slow process

Page 15

Education can stop the spread of AIDS but teaching people to protect themselves is a slow process, an American health educator told an Edmonton conference recently.

Joan Lewis works with the American Indian Health Care Association in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has been involved in AIDS education since 1988. AIDS can be stopped

if people change the way they act, she said at the recent Healing Our Spirit Worldwide conference.

"However, people have been in the process of forming those behaviors all their lives," she cautioned. "You can't change those behaviors in a month or two months or

a year or five years, however long your program is going to last."

"Government agencies, or at least our government agencies, tend to think that 'Well, if we're going to fund you for five years we expect some changes, some impacts, some evaluation. Some impact is going to come from your program.'"

"Changing those behaviors is such a huge task, you can't do it alone. The government certainly can't do it. It has to come from the community."

The American Indian Health Care Association consulted members of the community to help develop AIDS education materials. The association now has brochures, T-shirts, a bumper sticker, posters, comics, a coloring book and key

chains to spread its message.

"All of those materials are very popular," Lewis said. "And I think the reason they've been popular is they've been developed not specifically by me, but by the people they intended to help."

Lewis came to the conference armed with copies of the health care association's workbook Promoting Health Traditions. The book is a "how-to:" guide for setting up a community education program to deal with any kind of health issue. It includes chapters of how to gather the data needed for government grants, writing media releases and resources to use.

Native groups may have to do their own surveys if government statistics aren't available because they must document problems before they can get funding to help solve them.

The association did its own survey of urban Native people to find out what information they needed about AIDS. The results showed more than half the people who responded did not use condoms. Many respondents did not think Natives were at risk of contracting HIV - the virus believed to cause AIDS.

Groups working to prevent the spread of the disease must speak to the people who need information in language they can understand, Lewis said.

"I've seen AIDS teaching materials and brochures that were aimed at Native Americans or other groups and the reading levels were like twelve grade, fourteenth grade - that is post-graduate level and they just fly right over the heads of most people." People won't read a brochure that has too many words in it, she added.

If attitudes towards people with HIV infections and AIDS are to change, Lewis said people must be careful what language they use. Saying people who got infected through a blood transfusion are "innocent victims" suggests that people who got infected through sex or sharing needles for drugs deserve to get sick.

The difference between being HIV-positive and having AIDS needs to be made clear, Lewis said. Education material should explain that a person may carry the HIV virus for many years before they begin getting AIDS symptoms.

"In order to prevent a disease that's not going to happen for 10 years, we need to talk more in today's terms, tomorrow's or next weekend - the kind of behaviors that are going to be happening next weekend is something they can get a hold of, rather than 10 years from now."