Faith Integration Paper

Faith Integration Paper

Introduction

Since AIDs first came into public attention in the year 1986, it has claimed millions of lives worldwide because preventing its transmission as well as providing care for the already affected population has remained to be one of the major challenges in the public health sector. This is because even in the communities with high rates of AIDs epidemic, social stigma is too often dissuading the victims from seeking help. Although fighting the spread of HIV/AIDs calls for general support from all the sectors, stakeholders have exacerbated the epidemic. A good example is in South Africa where its former president Mbeki rejected basic scientific consensus based on AIDs leading to 343, 00 deaths between 1999 and 2007 which otherwise could have been prevented. As an attempt to achieving the ultimate goal in conquering the spread of this epidemic, religious leaders have been well-placed to guide followers about preventive measures of this disease.

Literature Review

Multiple studies have examined the mechanisms through which spirituality/religion affects outcomes in those living with HIV/AIDS. There are eight specific articles that one would like to take an interest in. The first article: Spirituality And Religion Among HIV-Infected Individuals, discusses the importance and the role of spirituality in people living with HIV. Spirituality and religion are important to many PLWH and affect their HIV outcomes, including disease progression, physical/mental health, and quality of life. In the study, the researchers state that the role of religion in HIV at the social level has been captured as responses by: religious organizations or religious/faith communities. The study distinguished between individual-level effects of spirituality/religion and the sociocultural religious influences on outcomes in PLWH. They also differentiated between individual-level and faith-community based interventions to improve outcomes in PLWH. In this study, they found that both positive and negative influences of spirituality/religion on outcomes have been identified, and several mechanisms incorporating or mediating the effects of spirituality/religion on HIV outcomes have been elucidated in studies utilizing state-of-the art methods. In particular the study highlights that HIV stigma beliefs, stress, and coping appear to have strong spirituality/religion components.

The second article, Comparative Effectiveness of a Faith-Based HIV Intervention for African American Women: Importance of Enhancing Religious Social Capital, focuses mainly on those persons who are of African American decent and who are at risk or has a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS. The study highlights how a faith-based intervention designed to enhance a prosocial determinant of health, religious social capital, can reduce African American women’s risk of HIV. The study tested if no single factor underlying the model of spirituality/religion items in the HIV-positive sample, six factors which includes: positive spiritual experience, negative spiritual experience, forgiveness, cultural practices, positive congregational support, and negative congregational support which underlie the model of spirituality/religion, and the distinction between positive and negative factors is more pronounced than spiritual and religious factors. In the study, it states that specific research has demonstrated that religious participation reduces mortality risks and improves health status and quality of life for African Americans.

The third article is Christian faith communities and HIV in humanitarian settings: the cases of South Sudan, DRC and Kenya. It focuses solely on those living in South Sudan and Kenya. The study showed that individuals find churches are the first port of call for the most vulnerable during emergencies. A lot of the individuals in these areas live in faith based communities. The research showed that the continuous presence of churches during conflict builds trust amongst local communities. Churches acted as mediators between communities, aid organizations, and helped to mobilize groups to implement activities; and negotiated safe passage for humanitarian actors.

The fourth review scrutinized in this paper is an article by Peter Okaalet “Roles of faith based bodies in the fight against AIDs epidemic in Africa.” Peter who is also the senior director in HIV/AIDs policy office at the MAP international in this article has provided an overview of some of the advantages of faith based responses to the victims of HIV/AIDs. Among them, Peter highlighted motivating the victims and giving them hope in life as the main advantage. Peter posits that faith based initiatives should be supported and properly coordinated as strategic drivers to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDs in the current society. The article has described the position of church regarding the state of HIV/AIDs and the proactive potentials if the relationship is taken as an advantage to fight the epidemic in the current society.

According to the fifth article “Faith-based organizations play a major role in HIV/AIDS care and treatment in sub-Saharan Africa”, an article by the WHO, the researchers argued out that religion, health, cultural norms and values were the defining factors in health-seeking strategies of Africans and failure of health policy makers to recognize the overarching impact of religion as well as the crucial roles of faith based organizations in the fight against HIV/AIDs disaster could extremely undermine the efforts to improve health services.

Best Practices

Spirituality/religion helps people to cope with stressors, especially stigma/discrimination. Spiritual interventions utilizing the power of prayer and meditation and addressing spiritual struggle are under way. Faith-based community interventions have focused on stigma and could improve individual outcomes through access to spiritual/social support and care/treatment for PLWA. One way to reduce stigma is to educate clergy and engage them in the development of community interventions. Prayer/meditation and group based support management appear to have some potential. Churches can provide spiritual care and refuge; they preach love and encourage kindness; and they can mobilize limited local resources to support vulnerable children, people with HIV and families. There are concerns, however, with their implementation in clinical settings due to reluctance of healthcare providers and limited resources. Compared with traditional HIV prevention efforts for PLWHA, which are often delivered in clinical venues, faith-based HIV-prevention interventions may be more appropriate because most individuals at risk for HIV often attend and engage in faith-based services. When it comes to working with this particular population, the best practices are incorporating faith/religion as an intervention. These individuals are on the verge of hiving up on life and do not see fit for life anymore. They become depressed and closed off from the world because of the stigma associated with having a HIV diagnosis. They also develop a great amount of anxiety. When conditions exist which make PLWHA reluctant to recognize their HIV status straightforwardly, they become dreadful because of being segregated by their families and communities and closed out of their jobs. They are probably going to deny treatment and may feel compelled to act in ways that imperil others and could likewise lead to depression, suicidal, and anxiety.

Ethical Considerations

Personal Faith and/or Worldview

Personally, I am starting to learn more and more about why intergrating faith is so valuable when working in the social work profession.

Personal Feelings about Integrating Faith with Practice

References

Szaflarski, M. (2013). Spirituality and religion among HIV-infected individuals. Current HIV/AIDS Reports, 10(4), 324-332.

Szaflarski, M., Kudel, I., Cotton, S., Leonard, A. C., Tsevat, J., & Ritchey, P. N. (2012). Multidimensional assessment of spirituality/religion in patients with HIV: conceptual framework and empirical refinement. Journal of religion and health, 51(4), 1239-1260.

Wingood GM, Robinson LR, Braxton ND, et al. Comparative effectiveness of a faith-based HIV intervention for African American women: importance of enhancing religious social capital. Am J Public Health. 2013; 103:2226–2233.