Study: HIV Patients Feel Stigmatized by Their Health Care Providers

Study: HIV Patients Feel Stigmatized by Their Health Care Providers
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/365245/study_hiv_patients_feel_stigmatized.html
By Regina Sass
Published Sep 01, 2007

A study just released by the University of California Los Angeles shows that 1/4 of all HIV patients feel that they are being stigmatized by their physicians. Even patients who do not have HIV, but have the virus that causes the disease, feel this way.

The fear is that if the patients feel that they are being treated this way, they will not seek much needed medical treatment.

The study used participants from the Los Angeles area. There were 223 HIV positive participants. They took the initial or baseline interviews between May 2004 and June 2005. They conducted the follow up interviews six months after the first ones.

Out of this group, 80% were male, 46% African American and 40% Latino. Almost 75% had a high school diploma, 50% had incomes below $8,000 a year and 46% did not have any insurance. They asked the participants how they contracted HIV and 54% said it was through homosexual contact, 30% said it was through heterosexual contact and 16% said it was through intravenous drug use.

They classify stigma in one of two ways. The first one is external or public and the second one is personal or perceived stigma.

The second one relates to an individual's fears of society's attitudes based on their HIV infection/

During the first round of interviews there were 223 patients and in the follow up 171.

The responses from the first set of interviews showed that 26% experienced at least one type of stigma from their health care provider. In the follow up survey, it was 19%. In response to another question, 58% said they experienced low levels of access to care. In the follow up it was 57%. Those who said the experienced stigma were more than twice as likely to report low access to care.

Next they are going to investigate to see of physicians are really stigmatizing HIV patients.

The head researcher is Janni J. Kinsle of UCLA, and the other researchers included Mitchell Wong, Jennifer N. Sayles and William Cunningham of UCLA, and Cynthia Davis of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles.

The research was funded by The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, the U.S. Agency of Health Quality Research, the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the National Institute on Aging.

Source: UCLA http://newsroom.ucla.edu/