HIV/AIDS Prevention, Faith, and Spirituality among Black/African American and Latino Communities in the United States: Strengthening Scientific Faith-Based Efforts to Shift the Course of the Epidemic and Reduce HIV-Related Health Disparities

Abstract

Black/African American and Latino communities are disproportionately affected by the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic. Blacks/African Americans and Latinos are also more likely to report a formal, religious, or faith affiliation when compared with non-Hispanic whites. As such, faith leaders and their institutions have been identified in the National HIV/AIDS Strategy as having a vital role to serve in reducing: (1) HIV-related health disparities and (2) the number of new HIV infections by promoting non-judgmental support for persons living with and at risk for HIV/AIDS and by serving as trusted information resources for their congregants and communities. We describe faith doctrines and faith-science partnerships that are increasing in support of faith-based HIV prevention and service delivery activities and discuss the vital role of these faith-based efforts in highly affected black/African American and Latino communities.

Correlates of HIV Testing among African American and Latino Church Congregants: The Role of HIV Stigmatizing Attitudes and Discussions about HIV

“…56 Church-based testing, in a culturally acceptable setting, is an underutilized resource that can overcome language and trust barriers, and thus may provide one way to reach these at-risk populations. 57 Our most novel results concern the church-related predictors of HIV stigmatizing attitudes and HIV-related discussions among congregants. Participants who expressed discomfort with attending church alongside HIV-positive congregants were less willing to get tested at church; and participants who had conversations with other people at the church about abstinence were less likely to have been tested.…”

Religiosity, Spirituality, and HIV Risk Behaviors among African American Women from Four Rural Counties in the Southeastern U.S.

“…The high prevalence of organizational religiosity in this population is consistent with the current understanding that collaborations between public health workers and religious leaders can result in essential dissemination of information on HIV risk prevention. 15 Should the associations observed here be replicated in other studies, the finding that religiosity and spirituality are associated with personal sexual risk behaviors, but are less strongly associated with characteristics of sex partners among adult African American women has implications for these collaborations. For example, resources could be developed in collaboration with religious leaders that specifically discuss HIV risks related to behavior of sex partners.…”

“…Despite emerging collaborations between the research community and faith- based institutions in providing HIV- related services and HIV prevention messages, 15,16 limited attention has been paid to the relationship between the religiosity of adult African American women, and their sexual behaviors and the risk characteristics of their sex partners. Among adult women in a nationally representative sample of the U.S., higher religiosity (measured by religious service attendance) was associated with fewer HIV risk behaviors.…”

Influences of Stigma and HIV Transmission Knowledge on Member Support for Faith-Placed HIV Initiatives in Chinese Immigrant Buddhist and Protestant Religious Institutions in New York City

“…In many Black churches, doctrinal beliefs about sexuality often perpetuated exclusionary attitudes towards PLWHAs (Wilson, Wittline, Munoz-Laboy, & Parker, 2011). Recent studies, however, highlighted other doctrinal beliefs of compassion and justice that sought to include PLWHAs in faith communities (Kang et al, 2011; Sutton & Parks, 2013). Bluthenthal et al, (2012) argued for a range of attitudes towards HIV in urban religious institutions, and that addressing extant HIV stigma and active involvement in HIV prevention and care were concurrent tasks.…”