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Ways of enhancing effective communication in HIV
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HIV is a devastating and deadly virus that affects 1.1 million Americans annually (CDC, 2010). The hardest hit group is that of gay or bisexual black males. The “Testing Makes Us Stronger” campaign was implemented August 15, 2011 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in response to this need for awareness and prevention in the black gay and bisexual male community. From 2006-2009, the number of infected black bisexual and gay men increased by 48% (CDC.gov, 2006-2009) showing an increased need for education and prevention as well access to HIV/AIDS testing in the community in order to reduce the occurrence of HIV among black gay and bisexual males.
The “Testing Makes Us Stronger” is a national awareness campaign designed by the CDC to empower and educate gay and bisexual males on the risk and prevention methods associated with HIV. The campaign has developed websites, social media, journal articles, posters, brochures, and community projects in order to spread the awareness of the campaign among the gay and bisexual community. They discuss the high risk behaviors associated with HIV transmission and the occurrence in an attempt to spread awareness and promote testing. "Among HIV-positive Black MSM under age 30, 71 percent were previously unaware of their infection" (blackaids.org). The main focus of the campaign is to make gay and bisexual males more aware of their HIV status regardless of the outcome. Being more informed allows the at risk group to take proper precautions by utilizing testing to reduce the spread of the disease.
The understand the message framing of this campaign you must first ask yourself some questions. What do we gain? What do we lose? These questions can be simply answered by two words, ...
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...iety united can we make a change.
Bibliography
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Richard Balko and Mary Maxfield discuss personal responsibility, and choices in one’s health in their essays “What You Eat Is Your Business,” and “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating” respectively. Balko feels the government should not intervene in people’s food intake because it is an individual preference. Instead, Balko asserts that the government should foster a program to assist the American people to take on personal responsibility and ownership of their own health. Similarly, Maxfield paints the same picture that our culture now finds it immoral to eat what our body needs, therefore believing in the idea of eating less is healthier. Maxfield points out the multi-billion dollar campaign of corporations into advertising false hope into consumers by buying into eradication of fatness. Why has food have suddenly become a risky subject at the dinner table? And who is to blame? Is it everyone else or do we blame ourselves?
Compounding these exceptionally troubling numbers is a significant population with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS). Again estimates vary, but the United Nations projects the national prevalence rate to be 4.5 percent of the population. Other estimates place the rate as high as 12 percent in the urban population and 5 percent in rural regions. As a small “win”, the infection rate for HIV/AIDS has recently shifted downward due to significant UNAIDS/WHO efforts (Haiti – Health).
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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2013). HIV and aids among gay and bisexual men. Retrieved from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website: http://cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/CDC-MSM-508.pdf
One thing that adds to the endangerment of black men is harmful vaccines. Over the past few years, the CDC have allowed doctors to give dangerous vaccines to black babies. These vaccines caused a spike in autism among African American males. To explain, "the CDC had in its possession irrefutable data linking MMR vaccines to autism
In The Black Male: Handbook: A Blueprint for life. Kevin Powell says “Images of black men in the media have been distorted for long in the country that many of us don’t even recognize dangerous images when we see them. We are desensitized to them because we them so much in popular culture, and because they’ve...
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Gregorio Millett, David Malebranche, Byron Mason, and Pilgrim Spikes. "Focusing "down low": Bisexual Black men, HIV risk and heterosexual transmission" Journal of the National Medical Association 97.7 (2005): 52S-59S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (2012). Refocusing national attention on the hiv crisis in the united states. Retrieved from website: http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/2012/AAAFactSheet-0712-508c.pdf
To reach a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment. Health is, therefore, seen as a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. Therefore, health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector, but goes beyond healthy life-styles to wellbeing. Health promotion goes beyond health care. It puts health on the agenda of policy makers in all sectors and at all levels. It directs policy makers to be aware of the health consequences of their decisions and accept their responsibilities for
"Much more work with low-income rural women of color needs to be conducted regarding HIV prevention needs and how best to respond to those needs," lead study author Dr. Richard A. Crosby of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, told Reuters Health. "This is an important population of women who can clearly benefit from increased HIV prevention efforts."
Stine, Gerald James. AIDS Update 2012: An Annual Overview of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.