JULIE “JD” Davids from TheBody.Com shared the following on how to measure Stigma: HIV stigma is slippery. People can unknowingly play into HIV stigma, or not recognise the impact of stigma in their community.
Stigma is enacted at all levels — by individuals, by communities, through public and private structures and in social and legal polities.
Given all this, how do we pin down, document and confront HIV stigma?
Since 2008, the People Living with HIV (PLHIV) Stigma Index has measured and revealed the shape of stigma and discrimination experienced by people living with HIV.
And the Stigma Index isn’t a study that delivers a report to sit on shelves. Planning and carrying
out the index empowers people with HIV, and is itself a force of addressing HIV stigma.
The PLHIV Stigma Index was launched in the United States on World AIDS Day 2013. As its first birthday approached, TheBody.com caught up with Laurel Sprague for an email check-in. Sprague, the Sero Project’s research director, has been living with HIV for over 20 years and is the national coordinator of the PLHIV Stigma Index in America.
In simple terms: What is stigma and what is HIV stigma?
Stigma is a process of devaluing people based on some characteristic of who they are. It is a social construction — by which I mean that it is created by people — that sets up some members of the community as more credible or valuable than others.
Stigma works by “othering” groups of people: labeling certain characteristics as different and undesirable, assigning negative stereotypes to people with those characteristics, and then
systematically excluding those people from full inclusion in social life.
When I talk about stigma, I find it important to stress that those without the stigmatising characteristics do not simply receive neutral treatment.
Instead, they are treated as if they are more valuable and are given countless messages that they deserve better treatment than others in their community.
HIV-related stigma occurs when social norms devalue the lives and experiences of people living with HIV. The stigma people face is not only about HIV status but also about racism, homophobia, sexism,
transphobia and many other forms of stigma and discrimination. These are intertwined with stigma based on HIV status in the communities and lives of people with HIV.
The effects of stigma on the lives of people with HIV are well documented at this point and include missed doses of medication; fear of HIV testing; avoiding medical care; violence at the hands of
intimate partners; hiding one’s status to avoid violence, losing employment or housing, and other forms of discrimination; and missing out on the care and support that people with other life-threatening
medical conditions can expect from people around them.
Stigma is something that individuals do, but also can be at the community level, systemic, etc. How do you define the different levels of stigma? How does the Stigma Index assess these different levels?
This is absolutely true. Too often, stigma is talked about as if it is an individual process, which masks how pervasive and damaging stigma really is.
The Stigma Index questionnaire included questions about stigma that respondents have experienced — and also anticipated stigma that may keep people from health care and social and family activities, and
internalizedstigma that people turn inward.
It assesses stigma in health care, family, community, faith, education and workplace settings. It also explores systemic stigma, such as that which exists in laws and policies and that enacted by public authorities, including HIV criminalisation, immigration laws, coercive policing, and detention policies.
In addition to these manifestations of stigma, the Stigma Index asks respondents about their feelings of empowerment, their challenges to stigma directed at them or others, and their resilience.
How does the PLHIV Stigma Index involve people with HIV?
The PLHIV Stigma Index is a research and action project created and led by and for people living with HIV. Partnerships are developed between networks of people with HIV and local researchers, government and community-based organisations.
All interviewers and interviewees are people living with HIV. The questionnaire asks about experiences
of stigma and discrimination, support systems, health and strategies for resilience. The study results are used for evidence-based programming and advocacy, led by local people living with HIV and
based on their priorities and lived experiences.
The project is more than research. It is a stigma intervention, creating spaces and support for people living with HIV to talk together about their experiences, build networks across different
affected communities, challenge mistreatment together, and develop a positive shared identity.
In particular, with this project, we are focused on raising attention and sharing solutions to issues of stigma as they relate to major life issues for people living with HIV, such as access to health care and
HIV treatment, housing, employment and freedom from violence.
What is unique about HIV in the United States that affects how you are conducting the PLHIV Stigma Index here?
I am not sure that there is much that is truly unique about HIV in the America, but there are some important issues that haven’t been highlighted yet in previous implementations that we want to highlight here.
Probably the biggest of these is the way that racism interacts with HIV stigma in the US and, second to that, is the power that states have to set social policy. Our lives — even our ability to survive –depends to a great extent on where we live in this country.
We also have to work with the reality that most people in the US are not familiar with the global human rights frameworks that apply to them or with the global commitments that have been made regarding the meaningful involvement of people living with HIV in the response to the epidemic.
In the US, we rarely talk about the human right to the highest attainable standard of health or responsibilities of our government to protect these rights.
Further, while we have some strong civil rights protections, the US has not ratified many international human rights treaties that might be used to challenge discriminatory treatment in regional or international bodies.
The national steering committee members for the US project have been remarkable in their commitment to making sure that we are asking the right questions. We have all committed to the goal of documenting and reporting the experiences of stigma for different groups of people living with HIV, especially those who are often left out of national conversations or spoken for by others instead of welcomed to speak for themselves.
Because of this, we have written some new questions and are testing them in our Detroit pilot. We created an additional module about stigma and discrimination in detention facilities (prisons, jail,
immigration centers, etc.), and added questions to better understand how stigma affects the care continuum, as well as questions about changes resulting from the Affordable Care Act. We are hoping to add another module that focuses specifically on stigma experienced by transgender women living with HIV.
There is so much that we want to learn from all of this. There are two big goals that are equally important in my view. The first is to understand, document and share the experiences of stigma for people living with HIV, including ways in which the forms and locations of stigma are different, and similar, for different groups.
The second goal is to examine how this model — in which people living with HIV who might not encounter each other otherwise are brought together to share information about their lives, listen to each other, and then develop joint strategies for change — makes a difference in people’s internalized stigma, community connections within and beyond HIV communities, and overall health and well-being.
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