Making a Way Out of No Way: The Promise of Africentric Approaches to HIV Prevention

Abstract

The ways in which selected factors limit human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention efforts in African American communities are discussed. Specifically, this discussion focuses on barriers to expanding the HIVprevention knowledge base such as (a) the stigma associated with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, (b) the overreliance on traditional models of health such as those used with adolescent pregnancy and substance abuse, and (c) the lack offunding for needed service delivery and research programs. Several dimensions of the African worldview are presented and these are used to illustrate ways to overcome the barriers just mentioned so that HIV prevention efforts might be more effective in African American communities.

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