HIV/AIDS + education: lessons from the 1980s + the gay male community in the United States.

• Author: King, Neal

Knowledge is power: If we learned anything in the gay male community during the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, it was that. No one knew what had hit us, and people were dying in huge numbers all around us. The community lost friends, colleagues, and intimate partners. Initially mislabeled "gay-related immune deficiency" (GRID), valuable time was lost in responding to the crisis because most felt safe in the belief that they were not at risk. Since early victims were predominantly gay men, the stigma attached to homosexuality in the medical, governing, law enforcement and ecclesiastical institutions became a barrier to understanding, prevention, and treatment.

Fresh out of doctoral study in the mid-1980s, I was part of the first generation of mental health providers to respond to the epidemic in the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. Nothing in my formal education prepared me for what was needed of me and my colleagues at that time.

Little did any of us imagine that more than twenty-five years later this same virus and its multiple mutations would result in a global pandemic. Nor that we would still be battling the complex and virulent varieties of stigma that afflict cultures around the world toward those most at risk for this disease: the poor, the uneducated, intravenous drug users, and those whose sexual practices are uninformed by current information, or unsanctioned by cultural norms. In many ways, the challenge with HIV/AIDS today is strikingly similar to what it was a quarter of a century ago: to educate--battling the stifling barrier of societal stigma and enduring myth to empower all citizens with the knowledge they need to remain out of harm's way, or how to best respond once infected.

The pandemic's epicentre has since shifted to sub-Saharan Africa and SouthEast Asia, to the least educated, disempowered citizens of the developing world, with a devastating impact on human, capital, social, infrastructure, and economic development that will be felt for generations. So many today suffer the ignorance, shame, and stigma that is still attached to the virus, that they don't seek education or treatment, or protect themselves and their loved ones when they can--all of which can literally be life saving.

In my own experience, recent events have been both sobering and offered cause for hope. With its powerful emphasis on access to education for all citizens and its endorsement over five hundred...