15th International AIDS Conference Bangkok, Thailand - July 11-16, 2004

Int Conf AIDS 2004 Jul 11-16; 15:(abstract no. TuOrD1168)

Chan KY, Yi Y, Zhang KL, Reidpath DD
Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

BACKGROUND: Controlling HIV stigma is central to controlling the epidemic. Unfortunately the understanding of the phenomenon is still in its infancy. HIV stigma is, for instance, known to be layered upon multiple co-stigmas associated with injecting drug use, sex work, sexual behavior, ethnicity, poverty and disability. Understanding the interplay between the illness stigma and the other layers of stigma is vitally important to the development of appropriate interventions. Unfortunately, and in part due to a lack of methodological efficiency, the nature of the 'layering' of stigma has not been well studied. A simple but novel technique for disentangling the 'layering' of the stigmas associated with HIV/AIDS is explored.

METHODS: Using a factorial survey design, participants in mainland China made judgements about vignettes of hypothetical characters with HIV/AIDS or a controlled condition. Each vignette had either no additional information or it also described a co-stigmatised behaviour such as injecting drug use or visiting a sex worker. Stigmatising attitudes were measured by participants' social distance from the character.

RESULTS: Analysis of variance was used to study the complete layering of stigma associated with illness and with stigmatised behaviours. Contrasting cell means was used to determine the extent to which HIV illness stigma was a unique phenomenon and the extent to which it was layered. A significant portion of the "HIV Stigma" is clearly associated with the co-stigmas and not the disease itself.

CONCLUSIONS: The results of this research are novel and important. In general, they show the value of this simple method for decomposing the layers of HIV stigma. In the specific, they demonstrate that controlling the stigma of the illness alone without addressing relevant co stigmas will severely limit the value of any HIV stigma reduction effort. The method will significantly enhance understanding of HIV stigma and assist in the development of context relevant stigma reduction strategies.

040711
TuOrD1168

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