Is Knowledge Enough? Considering HIV/AIDS Risk Behaviors and HIV/AIDS Knowledge With African American Women

Abstract

Background:This quantitative explanatory study was designed to explain the relationship between HIV/AIDS risk-taking behaviors among African American women and their knowledge surrounding HIV/AIDS. More specifically, the research considers whether knowledge alone was sufficient to alter African-American women’s risk-taking behaviors regarding HIV/AIDS.Objectives:This study was designed to investigate knowledge surrounding sexual risk-taking behaviors including 1) heterosexual transmission; 2) low and sporadic condom usage; 3) illicit drug use; and 4) multiple sex partners associated with HIV positive and negative status among African-American women.Patients and Methods:Participants in this study were African-American women who ranged in age between 24 and 44 years. This sample of African-American women was divided into two groups according to their HIV status: 53 women who were HIV positive and 62 women who were HIV negative women. The data for this investigation were obtained through self-administered questionnaires. The t-test was used to analyze the data through the use of the windows version of the statistical package for social sciences (19.0).Results:Findings suggest that knowledge of HIV was not found to be significantly different for the HIV positive and negative groups, and thus, suggest that knowing about the consequences of risk-taking behaviors is not sufficient to alter one’s behavior among African American women. The findings from this investigation will contribute new empirical knowledge to the existing social work database on HIV/AIDS and knowledge specifically relative to African-American women.Conclusions:It was anticipated that knowledge of HIV would have been significantly higher in the HIV negative group than in the HIV positive group. However, the hypothesis was not supported by data. The HIV positive women and negative women were equally knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS.

Social Acceptance for Patients Infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus in Kerman and Rafsanjan, Iran

“…With regard to the centers for disease control report, more than 1 178 350 people aged 13 or older have been reported living with AIDS in the United States (2). Social acceptance includes help and support of people in the community that consists of family, friends, neighbors and colleagues.…”

Higher Frequency of Transfusion-Transmitted Virus (TTV) in HIV Patients in Comparison with Healthy Blood Donors

“…In fact, only certain TTV genotypes and species may be particularly pathogenic un-der certain conditions (8). Since the beginning of HIV/AIDS epidemics, approximately 60 million people have been reported to have HIV, and nearly 25 million people have died, thereby indicating the importance of this epidemic (10,11).…”

Factors Associated with African American Women’s Sexual Health and Risk Behavior: A Mixed Methods Study

“…AAW have frequently been identified as being more likely than women of other groups to engage in concurrent partnerships (Adimora, Schoenbach, Taylor, Khan, & Schwartz, 2011;Nunn et al, 2012). Both inconsistent condom use and concurrent sexual partnerships have been identified as high-risk behaviors engaged in more frequently by AAW and are commonly used to measure AAW's sexual risk (McLellan-Lemal et al, 2012;Neblett et al, 2011;Perkins et al, 2014).…”

“…In most research studies examining AAW's sexual behavior, consistency in condom use, while varied in its definition, is typically characterized as women's use of condoms during each vaginal or anal sexual encounter occurring over a duration of 60 -90 days (Crosby et al, 2013;DePadilla, Windle, Wingood, Cooper, & DiClemente, 2011). The consistency of AAW's condom usage has often been described as low or sporadic (Perkins et al, 2014;Pfileger et al, 2013). Additionally, research studies examining AAW's sexual behavior often explore women's condom use in conjunction with having multiple or concurrent sexual partners (Grieb, Davey-Rothwell, & Latkin, 2012a;McLellan-Lemal et al, 2012;Nunn et al, 2012).…”

“…The identification of patterns of sexual risk behaviors and development of interventions to reduce or eliminate those behaviors has long since been the focus of research studies examining the sexual and reproductive health of AAW (McLellan-Lemal et al, 2012;Neblett et al, 2011;Reid et al, 2014). With heterosexual contact being attributed to most new HIV infections and other STIs in AAW, behavioral factors frequently identified in the examination of sexual risk for these women include: inconsistent condom use, having multiple or concurrent sexual partners, and the use of illicit drugs (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014b;McLellan-Lemal et al, 2013;Perkins, Stennis, Taylor Spriggs, Kwegyir-Afful, & Prather, 2014). Research has shown that other behavioral factors associated with AAW's sexual risk include: age of sexual initiation (before 15 years of age) and range of sexual activity (anal, oral, or vaginal sex) (Liu et al, 2015;Neblett et al, 2011;Pfileger et al, 2013).…”