HIV stigma reduction and testing in the Hispanic/Latino church setting
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Subject
Abstract
The study explored barriers and facilitators to HIV testing and stigma reduction interventions and developed and evaluated a culturally and religiously adapted measure of predictors of individuals' intentions to obtain HIV testing in the Latino church context. This study was conducted in two phases and collected data via focus groups, individual interviews, and surveys. Participants for Phase 1 (n = 74) and Phase 2 (n = 393) were recruited from three Latino Catholic churches. Data for Phase 1 were gathered on church members' and leaders' perceptions of the barriers and facilitators in the church to implement HIV stigma reduction and testing interventions via focus groups and individual interviews. Additionally, guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), these same focus groups and interviews were used to elicit information to guide the development of survey items focused on predictors of intentions to obtain an HIV test. Barriers identified included HIV-related stigma, HIV knowledge, fear, machismo, and cost among others. Further, individuals identified familismo, visible church support, access to testing, and increasing education as facilitators to implementing interventions. For Phase 2, we developed and assessed the acceptability and comprehension of the new measure through cognitive debriefing sessions (N = 8) and collected data (N = 385) to evaluate the psychometric properties of the developed questionnaire. The questionnaire assessed HIV testing intentions ( [proportional to] = .83) using TPB as a model, general HIV-related stigma Stigma ( [proportional to] = .77), religious HIV-related stigma ( [proportional to] = .81), social distance stigma ( [proportional to] = .85), perceived risk ( [proportional to] = .73), Fear of HIV rejection ( = .62), acceptance of HIV-positive individuals in church ( [proportional to] = .80), and fear of HIV testing ( [proportional to] = .65). Findings demonstrated fair-to-good reliability for these scales ('s [proportional to] < .60) and provided preliminary evidence of good construct validity and predictive validity. These findings highlight the need to develop HIV testing and stigma reduction interventions tailored for Latino churchgoers. Further, these findings provide initial evidence for a measure of HIV testing intentions and HIV-related stigma that may be used in future studies.
Table of Contents
Introduction and background -- Method - Phase 1 -- Results and discussion - phase 1 -- Method - Phase 2 -- Results - phase 2 -- Discussion - Phase 2 -- Appendix A. Figure 1 - Theory of Planned Behavior (TBP) -- Appendix B. Discussion/interview guide -- Appendix C. Tables 1-17 -- Appendix D. Figures 2-5 -- Appendix E. Questionnaire
DOI
PubMed ID
Degree
Ph.D.