County to Apply for $776,000 in State Funds to Fight AIDS

Orange County supervisors on Tuesday approved an application for $776,000 in state funds for AIDS education and prevention programs targeted at Latinos and drug users.

The money, to be spent over three years beginning July 1, also will be used on educational programs for sex partners of gay and bisexual men and for heterosexuals with multiple partners. The main recipients will be people attending county Health Care Agency clinics for family planning and special diseases.

A year ago the county received $100,000 in state funds and began an AIDS education program for Latinos, participants in county drug-use programs and some county employees.

The grant for the year beginning July 1 will total $220,248, and a projected expense record calls for spending $160,973 of that for five new employees--two health education associates, a program supervisor, a mental health nurse and a typist.

Educational Materials

An additional $59,275 will be spent on health-education materials such as pamphlets on AIDS and office and administrative costs.

A report by the Health Care Agency said the additional funds will allow expansion of the original program to educate intravenous drug users who are in county jails and drug programs, as well as sex partners of people at a higher risk of contracting the disease than the general population, and additional county employees.

The report said that while Latinos make up just under 16% of the county’s population, they account for 38% of the participants in the county’s drug-abuse programs and 38% of the jail population. Nationwide, the incidence of reported AIDS cases per 1 million Latino adults is 3.4 times the rate per 1 million Anglo adults, the report said.

The higher incidence of AIDS is attributed to proportionally greater drug use among Latinos and the failure of normal educational programs to reach and “affect the behaviors of this and other ethnic minority populations,” according to the report.

“Within the traditional extended Hispanic family, mothers play a very assertive role as care givers and teachers,” the report said. “They are for this reason key individuals to target in any strategy for affecting knowledge, attitudes and behavior change in the Hispanic community.”

As a result, the report said, the county will educate Latino women attending prenatal and family-planning clinics about the risk of AIDS and ways to prevent it “if they are to protect their own health and that of the unborn.”

AIDS is transmitted through blood or sexual intercourse. Gay and bisexual men and intravenous drug users have been the main victims of the disease so far, but as it spreads to the heterosexual population the risk rises for men and women with numerous sex partners.