Community Must Address AIDS Epidemic

The keynote speaker at the 4th annual African-American Nursing History Conference at the University of Missouri-St. Louis said preventing HIV/AIDS must begin and end with the community. Loretta Sweet Jemmott, the van Ameringen Professor in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing and director of the Center for Health Equity Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, told nurses, student nurses, and other health professionals in attendance they must learn the "code of their streets" to change behaviors linked to HIV/AIDS.

Jemmott and her husband, John B. Jemmott, have long studied evidence-based HIV risk-reduction strategies. Their team has received more than $100 million in federal funding for designing and evaluating a series of culturally relevant safe-sex interventions targeting different groups. She has worked on HIV/AIDS initiatives in the United States, South Africa, Botswana, and Jamaica.

Being informed about HIV/AIDS is not enough, said Jemmott. "Knowledge alone only gives you an 'A' on the knowledge test," she said. "In order for me to go from here to behavior, you've got to deal with all this stuff in the middle - that's my attitudes, my beliefs, my concerns, my efficacy - all the things that get me to put that condom on . ."

According to Jemmott, young women must be taught to develop the self-confidence to insist that their sex partners use condoms. "When you are confronted about sex and sexual relationships, peer pressure goes out the window and partner pressure comes in," she explained. "We can design better programs for our teens if we teach our teens how to deal with partner pressure, not peer pressure."

The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.


TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!