I have been thinking about this for a few days... I am not sure if there have been a poll out there to ask THIS question "Do you think HIV/AIDS exist in the deaf community?" among the deaf community in the United States.
A lot of agencies had services set up for the deaf about HIV prevention then died out in a few years because of low turnout and insufficent numbers of clients or funds. (That's what I have been told by some folks who were there.) So far there is GLADD (Los Angeles) Deaf AIDS Project (in Family Services Foundation- Baltimore), Gay men's health Crisis (New York), AIDS Initiative for Deaf Services Task Force (which is located at AIDS Project Hartford, in Conn) and AIDS Foundation of Chicago (Advocate Metro OutReach Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program in Chicago.) If there are more organizations that provide services (outreach, prevention, one-to-one counseling, support groups, workshops applying to HIV/AIDS and STDS), I'm all "ears!" I am sure there are readers out there that are curious too if there are services where they can go in for testing and counseling (IF confidentiality can be managed.)
Now, I would like to see if folks can answer this poll that I created in mind for the deaf readers and perhaps hearing folks if they work with deaf clients. I would like to get an IDEA at least where one can start! Like that main female character in "Dogma" said, "I have an idea, not a belief of what one can do."
2 comments:
I produced a series of 30 second broadcast public service announcements in sign language in 1996. The masters are available at the CDC and you could request television stations to air them. Just contact CDC for more information.
David H. Pierce
Davideo Productions
Seguin, TX
One place you might want to check for resources related to HIV/AIDS and deaf people (or people with disaiblities in general, for that matter) is:
http://www.asksource.info/
I think their focus is on people in developing countries, but some of those resources might help inspire ideas for similar resources that could be useful elsewhere.
Asksource is an informational resource center for health-related resources for developing countries. So you can also check the site for general HIV/AIDS information and resources.
Don't let the fact that the site is not US-centric scare you off. Americans tend to be too insular--but we don't have all the answers! We have a lot to learn from other countries too! Also, you can sometimes extrapolate from seemingly different contexts to our own. For example, reaching out to deaf people probably has certain things in common with reaching out to people in rural or remote areas: certain types of services are easier to set up if you have a high concentration of clients all in one place -- but unless you're in a deaf-popular city like Wash DC or Rochester, deaf people tend to be spread out more thinly just like hearing people in really rural areas. So you might get interesting ideas for how to bring services to where daef people are even if they're not in or near a city.
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