 |
The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
5056.0: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 - 9:07 AM
Abstract #51871
Asian Immigrant Women's Program
Learning Objectives:
It is very common that Asian and Pacific Islander (API) adult and adolescent females face shame and stigma around issues of sex, sexuality, and drug use. Recognizing that API women often fail to receive early diagnosis and treatment for HIV and STDs, Asian Health Services’ created a unique street and community outreach women’s program targeting Asian immigrant women in Alameda County. Our targeted sub-populations are API commercial sex workers and API women working in low-wage industries. We conduct outreach to various sites within Alameda County that include massage parlors, sewing factories, restaurants, and scheduled one on one’s. Since our HIV outreach education is incorporated in the context of women’s health, other issues such as reproductive health care, intimate partner violence, substance abuse, Hepatitis B screening, breast and cervical cancer, etc. are discussed. As the first service provider to provide HIV services to API communities in Oakland, we have remained the single most comprehensive program for HIV services to API women in Oakland. We provide both on and off-site HIV antibody testing and pre/post-test counseling and primary medical care for seropositives in five languages—Cantonese, Mandarin, English, Vietnamese, and Thai. Just this past year, we have reached over 2800 community members through our outreach. Working relationships with other community based organizations and Asian services organizations serving these co-populations have been crucial to the success of our program. Another key factor to our success has been our ability to constantly evolve our model of culturally competent services to meet the changing needs of high-risk API communities. This presentation will focus on the successful strategies of our program, the challenges we have faced in outreaching to API immigrant women, and how we have tailored our program to meet the evolving needs of our target population.-
- Learning Objectives
- 1) Recognize the unique cultural challenges API immigrant women face in seeking health care services, particularly HIV services.
- 2) Identify effective strategies for conducting outreach to API immigrant women about HIV/AIDS.
- 3) Understand the concept of “cultural competence” in the context of health promotion and prevention, particularly HIV/AIDS, for API immigrant women.
Keywords: Women and HIV/AIDS, Immigrant Women
Related Web page: www.ahschc.org
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Asian Health Services
Medical Care Section Solicited Papers #6: Health Care of Immigrant Women - What Has Gone Well?
The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA