Few modern health issues have received as much media interest and controversy as the AIDS virus. The AIDS virus was first named in 1981 to explain a collection of diseases that developed as a result of a compromised immune system. Individuals who were young and apparently healthy were showing signs of conditions that were typical of those with a severely depressed immune response. It was also noted, at the time, these conditions were limited to the gay community. As the disease became more prevalent, individuals, groups, and communities responded in fear and hatred toward the population they believed to be responsible for this epidemic, the gay community. Because the issue of gay rights was politically controversial and our president’s platform was essentially anti-gay, AIDS was ignored by the administration. The political and media response in the early days of the AIDS virus was essentially nonexistent. Prejudice by the American people prompted politicians, who were concerned for their reputations, to step back. The media, also influenced by a political agenda, kept their coverage benign and low key. The impact of this slow media response to the AIDS epidemic would have disastrous consequences.
Health Communication
Health communication, at its most effective incorporates the study and use of communication strategies to education, inform, and influence individual and societal decisions for the purpose of promoting health (Site, 2012). The goal of health communication is to promote healthy lifestyle changes and practices in a population through the use of communication methods and tools. Health communication covers a variety of health issues including disease prevention, health promotion, health care policy, and the...
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...ponse to the AIDS virus. Everyone was observing for the telltale signs of AIDS in others including Kaposi scars, dramatic weight loss, and respiratory symptoms. Infected Individuals were facing prejudices that
Children with AIDS were prevented from going to school; infected adults lost their jobs, their families, and were shunned by a fearful society. Available testing for AIDS was underutilized by the gay population for fear of further social consequences. The government was finally forced to take action through media channels to manage the global threat to all people that AIDS not presented. Out of necessity to manage the virus and provide reassurance to those infected the government implemented privacy laws that protected the individuals who tested positive for the AIDS.
(6.) Submit an example of a letter you could send that could influence health policy
Even after the disease and its modes of transmission had been correctly identified, fear and ignorance remained widespread. In the mid 1980s, “AIDS hysteria” became a well known term in the media and public life. For example, a magazine published details about how extensive AIDS/HIV related discrimination became. “Anxiety over AIDS in some parts of the U.S. is verging on hysteria,” the authors wrote; they later published this disturbing example:
Carl Zimmer the guest speaker of this broadcast states that in 1981 doctors described for the first time a new disease, a new syndrome which affected mostly homosexual men. The young men in Los Angeles were dying and the number of cases was growing faster and faster. The number of deaths was increasing from eighty to six hundred and twenty five in just the first few months. After the first few cases in LA, AIDS was declared to be one of the deadliest pandemics the world had ever seen after the plague in the Middle Ages.
For this assignment, I choose to watch How To Survive A Plague directed by David France. The documentary was focused on the aids crisis in the 1980s. The men were introduced to an illness called HIV positive or aids. The majority people who had aids were the gay people when they had sexual interactions with eachother and did not use protection. There were a couple of women who were HIV positive as well but it was to their understanding that their husband were gay.
One important scene in the film ‘The Age of Aids’ is “Port Au Prince, Haiti”. In this scene it outlines the conditions in Haiti, which were very poor and it turn left the city defenseless against the new disease. In 70’s and 80’s the disease began to be seen by doctors and priests who were being sought after to cure a unseen disease which left the people with the “look of death, [making them] so skinny you could see their bones”. The scene then goes on to take a look at one of the first HIV clinics in Port Au Prince, which was opened in the roughest parts of town. One of the surprising things that this clinic found when they were looking at the patients coming in was that the mean they were analyzing had more contact with women then they had with men. This was extremely interesting because this was completely different from what the pattern of the disease had been in the US. The doctors believed this was because homosexual males had been coming into Haiti as tourists and where having sex with locals, who in comparison didn’t call themselves homosexuals because even though they had been having sex with men, the number of women they were having sex with greatly outnumbered the men. This was extremely important because it allowed people to open their eyes, and realize that this was not a homosexual disease, that anyone could get the disease. And that’s exactly what happened within the Haitian community. Within three years the disease had spread across the entire island effects all aspects of society. This scene was effective because it is able to change a viewer with little knowledge of the disease to understand how doctors were able to come to the conclusion that the disease was not in fact a homosexual ...
The 1980’s in America were a very iconic time period for the country. Music, films, and history were created that will never be forgotten. But during the 1980’s the AIDS epidemic became a very serious matter. According to Macionis, AIDS, first identified in 1981, is an incurable, deadly disease transmitted through bodily fluids including blood, semen, vaginal secretions and breast milk. The Dallas Buyers Club portrays what happened during the AIDS epidemic, and the social issues that people were faced with. Sexuality and AIDS were seen as directly linked, drug abuse and AIDS were also linked, and AIDS patients experienced difficulties with healthcare facilities.
Randy Shilts set out to make monumental changes in the world’s perspective of AIDS. He planned to enlighten, motivate, and educate the population on this tragic disease that has already claimed so many lives. He believed that virtually all the misconceptions about AIDS would be corrected and the public would insist that more be done to stop the epidemic. "I had hoped to effect some fundamental changes. I really believed I could alter the performance of the institutions that had allowed AIDS to sweep through America unchecked" (220). Shilts’s immense expectations positioned him for his inevitable sense of failure. He did not accomplished all that he had planned. AIDS was still spreading and people were still dying. "The bitter irony is, my role as an AIDS celebrity just gives me a more elevated promontory from which to watch the world make the same mistakes in the handling of the AIDS epidemic that I hoped my work would help to change"(220).
The Movie “And the Band Played On” is the framework of the earliest years of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Also known as the Gay disease. The movie examines HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States in the earlier 1980’s and emphasizes on three crucial components. An immunologist with knowledge in eradicating smallpox and containing the Ebola virus, joins the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to attempt and recognize just what this disease is. The film also deals the administration and government side that does not seem to care. The homosexual community in San Francisco is separated on the nature of the disease but also want to know what should be done
.“With liberty and justice to all”, though this was not the case when the AIDS epidemic first jumped off. I believe that the only reason justice, mercy, and veracity were not served at the beginning of this battle is simply because of majority and minority. AIDS, at first, was only found to be attacking the gay population (minority), but the people that could do something about it, or control the money that could help with the situation were not being affected, and didn’t feel threatened by it (majority). The gay community was given no mercy at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.
The government played a major part in the AIDS situation. The government’s blood banks did not wish to check blood with a test developed by the CDC because it was not “cost-efficient.” The government also neglected the CDC of large sums of money needed in the pursuit of a cure or vaccine in the disease and thought more of dollar signs that the lives of people.
In the movie “And the Band Played On”, illustrated the origin of the AIDS virus, how it was spread across the world quickly. It began with a scene in 1976, Central Africa, shows how the Ebola disease affected a village and was contained before it was spread. This was to show the beginning of another serious disease called AIDS. The world was not prepared to handle such a contagious plague. Doctors treating people with this virus thought that the first cases of the HIV virus was just an abnormality disease. The disease started to spread all over, especially gay men. Throughout the movie, I was able to see different points, such as the beginning of AIDS, the misconceptions it had, and the anguish it brought to the doctors as well as people around the world.
In the movie And the Band Played On, stakeholders’ interests stymied public health efforts to research and implement health policy to control the rapidly emerging disease, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The stakeholders within the movie, those whose interest would be impacted by policy change, included the affected populations, scientists, state and federal public health officials, and organizations including blood banks. Early in the epidemic, the Center for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were tentative in disclosing vital information – many homosexual men were becoming infected in the bathhouses (Pillsbury, Sanford, & Spottiswoode, 1993). Despite having the supporting evidence of patient zero and a sexual cluster
I had only really known the scientific details of the disease such as that the virus affects a human's immune system by progressively ridding one's body of a certain kind of white blood cell. That was all that AIDS was to me- an autoimmune disease. Your novel allowed me to put a face to the disease, and informed me of the other physical affects that AIDS has on the body. Nkosi's constant diarrhea, his unavoidable lethargy, and his drastic weight loss are all details that helped reinforce my understanding of the physical affects of AIDS. Furthermore, not only did your novel help reinforce my understanding of the autoimmune disease, but it also touched me emotionally, and has inspired me
One of the most cost-effective ways of targeting the issues of Maternal and Child Health (MCH) is through Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC). SBCC is part of the broader sub-discipline of health communication – the study and application of communication strategies for promoting positive health outcomes (Sreekumaran et al., 2016). According to Sreekumaran et al (2016), SBCC is the whole range of procedures and techniques used to inspire positive health outcomes by making planned and prearranged usage of communication to strengthen health seeking behaviours through health literacy and can be either focused at the community or individual level. SBCC is defined as “a research-based consultative process of addressing knowledge, attitudes and practices through identifying, analysing and segmenting audiences and participants in programmes by providing them with
Because state and local public health programs are often funded at least in part with Federal dollars, accountability is often a key issue (“Ten Essential Public Health Services.” 2015). Public health programs therefore document progress towards positive change in health behavior or health status indicators (“Ten Essential Public Health Services.” 2015). Data such as these can be presented to policymakers to document the value or effectiveness of a program (“Ten Essential Public Health Services.” 2015). Those data can also be used for continued program planning and modification (“Ten Essential Public Health Services.” 2015). Policies have positive or negative influences on health. Examples of health policies include safety standards, which influence the incidence of injuries; tobacco regulations affect personal health; and safe city parks can affect the ability for people are active (California Department of Public Health “Strategic Plan”, 2013). It is a systematic process to utilize appropriate data, develop and track measurable health objectives, establish strategies and actions to guide the targeted improvements (California Department of Public Health “Strategic Plan”, 2013). The targeted strategies may be laws, codes, regulations and/or
In 1981, a new fatal, infectious disease was diagnosed--AIDS (Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome). It began in major cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco. People, mostly homosexual men and intravenous drug users, were dying from very rare lung infections or from a cancer known as Kaposi’s sarcoma. They have not seen people getting these diseases in numerous years. Soon, it also affected hemophiliacs, blood recipients, prostitutes and their customers, and babies born from AIDS-infected women. AIDS was soon recognized as a worldwide health emergency, and as a fatal disease with no known cure, that quickly became an epidemic. When high-profile victims began to contract the virus, such as basketball star Magic Johnson, the feeling spread quickly that anyone, not just particular groups of people, could be at risk. AIDS impairs the human body’s immune system and leaves the victim susceptible to various infections. With new research, scientists think that the disease was first contracted through a certain type of green monkey in Africa, then somehow mutated into a virus that a human could get. AIDS is a complicated illness that may involve several phases. It is caused by a virus that can be passed from person to person. This virus is called HIV, or Human Immuno-deficiency Virus. In order for HIV to become full-blown AIDS, your T-cell count (number of a special type of white-blood cells that fight off diseases) has to drop below 200, or you have to get one of the symptoms of an AIDS-induced infection.