For example, a separate medication pickup line at a pharmacy, specifically for people living with HIV, may be well-intentioned in order to help save clients’ time, but the result can be stigmatizing, and could unintentionally reveal their status.
Strategies that work
What other strategies have health care facilities adopted that help reduce stigma?
Increase awareness
Sometimes stigma can be increased unintentionally, whereby people living with HIV are treated differently from other clients.
Measure stigma
Conduct surveys in health care facilities to help identify the key actionable drivers and gaps in care.
These surveys could help provide enough information around stigma to inform reduction methods, particularly if these measures are standardized to facilitate comparisons between intervention approaches and methods.
Participatory trainings
Follow up with participatory training post-survey, which, to be effective, must include all staff members as well as doctors and nurses, and people living with HIV.
Training could even be led by clients and staff members living with HIV, who can explain to other staff members why such sensitizations are necessary, how stigma impacts them, what each staff member can do on the individual level to enact change, and encourage other staff members to get tested.
Role-playing
This can be a very important tool in effective interventions. Instead of teaching stigma and interventions theoretically, role-plays allow people to actually see examples of stigmatizing tendencies, and how those play out.
Stigma in health care facilities isn’t just about workers. Both a hospital guard and a receptionist at the registration desk can play the role of gatekeepers, blocking access to health care workers — so, in order to truly address stigma in health care facilities, all staff members need to be included in training and role play, not just nurses and doctors.
Practical cues
Health facilities should be equipped with HIV protocols and medicines in the case of accidental exposures — this is critical to reducing stigmatizing behaviors that might arise from fear of infection.
Ensure all staff members are educated about how to avoid HIV transmission.
Want to learn more about the most impactful strategies for reducing HIV/AIDS stigmatization and discrimination?