CROI 2014: Women’s Issues
Data is discussed from work the single poster presentation at CROI explicitly focused on HIV stigma. The study looked at rural Kenya researching HIV stigma and its social impact on pregnant women and resulted in a link between post-partum depression and HIV stigma. A second African regional study is discussed with women’s use of oral and microbicidal PrEP finding that only one third of women actually used the therapy resulting in a lack of ability to determine whether these potentially important preventive therapies worked in high risk young African women. Follow up interviews with the study populations uncovered that uninfected HIV women in the study were afraid to use the medications in the study for fear of stigma that they would be discovered using biomedical interventions for HIV.
Kristi Stringer, MD, Medical Sociologist, University of Alabama, Birmingham;
Sharon Hiller, MD, Professor, University of Pittsburgh, Microbicide Trials Network, Pittsburgh, PA
Heidi Nass, Community Advocate, ATAC, Host