Faith-based responses (Civil Society)

Faith-based responses (Civil Society)

YOUR Blessed Health: an HIV-prevention program bridging faith and public health communities.

African American faith-based institutions are not necessarily equipped to balance their moral and spiritual missions and interpretation of religious doctrine with complex health issues such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). YOUR Blessed Health is a faith-based, six-month pilot project designed to increase the capacity of faith-based institutions and faith leaders to address HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in 11- to 19-year-old African Americans. In addition to increasing the knowledge and skills of young people, the intervention seeks to change churches' norms to provide more open settings where young people can talk with faith leaders about sex, relationships, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV. YOUR Blessed Health expands the roles of adult faith leaders, particularly pastors' spouses, to include health education as they implement the intervention in their congregations and communities. The intervention includes a flexible menu of activities for faith leaders to select from according to their institutional beliefs, doctrines, and culture.

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Editors’ note: Flint, Michigan now has more than the Michael Moore film ‘Roger and Me’ to its credit. This innovative pilot project, YOUR Blessed Health, engaged the African-American faith community through 12 churches across 6 denominations and 2 housing communities in Flint. Among its unique features was the customization of the programme to fit the beliefs and doctrines of each church so that HIV transmission and prevention could be effectively discussed, balancing moral and spiritual missions and interpretations of church doctrine with the public crisis of HIV among African-Americans. The intent was to change how these issues were addressed both now and in the long term so that churches become more open and accepting settings for the discussion of behaviours and factors that put young people at risk of acquiring HIV. Another unique feature was engaging pastors’ spouses as lead trainers – they understand the pastor’s vision and the church’s culture – to counter young people’s sense of invincibility with accurate facts about HIV. Faith-based organisations in all religions have an important role to play in addressing the HIV epidemic in positive ways that can make a real difference. They can only do this when there is a will for open discussion of the issues and the design and implementation of context-specific solutions.