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On February 8th 2013, the Presidential Advisory Council on ***/AIDS
convened in Washington, D.C.
During the meeting, members from UNAIDS
and the Global Network of People Living with ***
sat down for a conversation with AIDS.gov
about the Stigma Index and the impact of stigma
in our response to ***/AIDS.
Stigma is really both inward stigma, internalized stigma,
as well as stigma that is imposed upon you by others.
And I think often that the internalized stigma,
the not wanting to be identified as someone living with AIDS
or someone who is a gay man, drives you away
from information, treatment, care, support, testing,
and that’s one of the biggest things we have to fight.
And what the results show from other countries
is that people don’t get healthcare when they need it
because they’re afraid of how healthcare providers will treat them.
And it’s shocking to see what high percentages
of people resist care or don’t get care when they need it
and I’ve had that experience myself when I needed it
because I didn’t want to go to a new provider and face their discrimination.
I found out I was *** positive in the very beginning of the epidemic
and I experienced a surgeon who wouldn’t reconstruct
my inner cruciate ligament in 1989,
he literally told me “I’m not going to subject myself or nurses
or other doctors to your deadly disease
just so that you can continue to play sports.
You should go swimming, you should learn to swim.
I had a former employer force me out to long term disability
as soon as I got an AIDS diagnoses,
even though I wanted to continue to work.
And so, even for me who is a privileged, educated, white gay man,
who’s always had access to health care,
even I’ve been the victim of stigma.
It still plays out.
I like to say the Stigma Index is a research initiative
that pairs the experts of academia with people living with ***,
and trains people living with *** to talk to other people with ***
about how they experience stigma and how it interferes
with their ability to access information, treatment, care and support
in the context of *** related stigma and discrimination.
This is the first time in North America that we’ve had
an implementation of the stigma index,
but it’s been implemented in about 45 countries around the world.
For more information about the Stigma Index, visit stigmaindex.org.