AED Assists Caribbean Immigrants Living With HIV and AIDS

AED Assists Caribbean Immigrants Living With HIV and AIDS

Peer Counseling Helps Fight Stigma

 

For many Caribbean immigrants in the United States, living with HIV/AIDS is considered a death sentence. In their community, there is

Some Caribbean immigrants receive sub-par health care, if any at all.
a social stigma attached to the pandemic that is so strong that some people living with the virus do not tell even close family members about their health.

Getting to the doctor for proper medical assistance can seem nearly impossible. Whether because of lack of transportation, nonexistent health insurance, or just not knowing that routine medical assistance is vital to their survival, some Caribbean immigrants receive sub-par health care, if any at all.

“If they just go to the doctor when they are sick, that is just not adequate,” said Karabi Acharya, a senior research and evaluation officer with the AED Center for Applied Behavioral Evaluation and Research, or CABER.

In order to empower this group to take control of their health care, CABER is providing training, technical assistance, and evaluations to five health care facilities. Four of the five sites participating in the Caribbean HIV Evaluation and Support project are located in New York City, and the fifth is in Miami, Fla.

An Inspirational Group of People

Each demonstration site uses different strategies for finding this somewhat elusive group of people. For example, in Miami the project works with people from the Caribbean who have been admitted to the hospital for in-patient treatment. Other sites work with local churches and community groups.

“This is a courageous and committed group of people willing to take tremendous personal risks." --Elvis Fraser 
Each site uses “peer promoters” to provide emotional and informational support to these Carribean immigrants living with HIV/AIDS. The peer promoters are not professional counselors, said Acharya. They are all from the Caribbean so they understand the culture. The peer promoters are also living with HIV themselves. They were hired by the five health care facilities in the program in order to provide this emotional support and connect them to other social services they may need.

“This is a courageous and committed group of people willing to take tremendous personal risks to provide social support to others living with the disease,” said Elvis Fraser, the vice president and director of CABER. “They are an inspiration.”

Sharing Stories

Some in the group were veteran peer promoters, and others had never met another person living with HIV/AIDS. The training AED provided was crucial so that the peer promoters were prepared for the challenges they faced.

“It was an intense, emotional couple of days."
--Karabi Acharya


Topics covered in the training included understanding the barriers to high-quality health care, knowing how to set professional boundaries with clients, and learning active listening skills.

“It was an intense, emotional couple of days, particularly for those who were newly recruited” said Acharya. “But they realize that by sharing their stories they can help others get care.”

The peer promoters will start implementing their particular interventions before the end of the year. And CABER will be right there with them, collecting data on which interventions are most effective for different groups of Caribbean people, compiling lessons learned, and planning models that can be replicated to other health care providers.

 

 

For more information, contact Laurine Thomas.

Learn more about AED’s work in HIV/AIDS.

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