Forum looks at AIDS in Latino community

Cultural attitudes about condoms, promiscuity and homosexuality and the stigma of AIDS as a death sentence are among the roadblocks to the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS in Latino men in Ventura County, researchers said Thursday during a presentation at California Lutheran University.

"We have to destigmatize AIDS," said CLU professor Adina Nack, a medical sociologist. "AIDS does not equal death. HIV is not a gay disease."

She and professor Jose Marichal, a political scientist, shared their thoughts on improving HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment for Ventura County Latino men during a 90-minute event on the Thousand Oaks campus. The presentation was one of several in the yearlong Alma and Clifford Pearson Distinguished Speakers series, which is focused this year on issues related to improving the lives of Latinos in Ventura County.

In an effort to improve education and outreach on the disease in the community, Nack and another investigator conducted a study in 2005 and 2006 using community-based, in-depth interviews with about 30 Latino men over 18 who are living with HIV/AIDS.

"Latinos continue to be significantly impacted by HIV/AIDS in Ventura County," said Nack, who also is a member of Ventura County's HIV/AIDS Coalition. The research focused on men, she said, because they tend to get infected then transfer the disease to their female partners, who may also pass it on to their children.

Men in the study were asked a wide range of questions about their attitudes and behaviors, including what it means to be a man, whether they received formal sex education in school, and how they responded to their diagnoses.

The key to improving outreach, she said, is understanding the cultural attitudes that influence the behavior and finding ways to improve them. Adding more bilingual and bicultural health educators, using Spanish media to spread messages about condom use and safe sex, and sending messages that being responsible means getting tested and treated can lead to changes in behavior, she said.

"We can't just demonize cultural Latino values," Nack said.

"We need to draw on the positives, like linking HIV testing to being a better provider" for the family.

Nack's research inspired a summit for Latino leaders last summer and also the creation of the Ventura County's Latino HIV/AIDS Task Force, which formed several months ago to begin addressing some of the concerns raised.

Marichal is a member of the Latino HIV/AIDS Task Force, and is chairman of the task force's social mapping committee. The committee is working to identify issues and behaviors that contribute to stigmatize the disease and contribute to the incidence of HIV/AIDS in Latino men.

"What is the behavior? Where are the sites it takes place? Why is there a gap between the preferred behavior and the actual behavior?" Marichal said, listing some of the areas his committee is looking at.

The task force held a series of focus groups to get answers to some of those questions. Members will be meeting later this month to begin going over the results and find ways to address them, he said.