U.S., Local Officials to ‘Brainstorm’ on AIDS Project’s Education Efforts

Twyla Perry of the San Diego AIDS Project foresees the day when music videos aren’t the only forms of enlightenment in the San Diego nightclub scene.

She sees public service announcements on safe sex. She sees bartenders so knowledgeable about acquired immune deficiency syndrome that they can “educate 10 people in one night.”

She sees condoms readily available in bars. She sees a major media blitz with AIDS awareness messages on everything from prime-time television to buses, all proclaiming “Catch the Facts.”

Billboards with AIDS messages will spring up around the county in January, she said. But, “We need more.”

Assessing San Diego’s Effort

To find out how San Diego is coping with the AIDS crisis, a representative from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta will meet with county social workers at 10 a.m. today at the County Administration Center to examine the county AIDS awareness programs.

San Diego is the last stop of the CDC’s National AIDS Information and Awareness Campaign through 28 cities, said Mark Rogers, the CDC’s public relations spokesman in Washington, D.C. This is the first time federal officials are attempting to find out what’s being done about AIDS at the local level, Rogers said. The CDC will use what it learns to begin a yearlong federally funded information campaign.

“This way, the federal government can perhaps not reinvent the wheel when beginning a national campaign for AIDS awareness,” Rogers said. “They won’t repeat mistakes or overlook successes.”

Representatives Invited

Rogers said the CDC wants to identify what San Diegans are doing to educate the community, raise awareness and prevent the spread of AIDS, in comparison with other U.S. cities.

The CDC has invited representatives from the San Diego County Health Department, the Comprehensive Health Center, the Logan Heights Family Health Center, the San Diego AIDS Project, the Center for Social Services, the People of Color AIDS Survival Effort, Planned Parenthood, the San Diego Council of Community Clinics, San Diego State University’s Student Health Advisory Council, the AIDS Assistance Fund and the Womancare Clinic.

Brainstorming Session

Joan Friedenberg, chief of public health education at the San Diego County Health Services Department, said the public is invited to observe, but not participate in, the meeting.

“There will be a lot of brainstorming,” said Perry of the San Diego AIDS Project, which provides a speakers bureau and a new program aimed at teen-agers.

Perry said one of the biggest obstacles San Diego faces is getting money to produce the educational materials and hire people to distribute the information to the public.

However, a nationwide campaign by the CDC should have a major effect on AIDS awareness throughout the country.

“When the CDC speaks, it’s fact, it’s studied, it’s proven. People know it to be the truth,” she said.

Some Groups Hard to Reach

Some people still won’t listen, though; Perry said intravenous drug abusers are one of the most difficult groups to educate.

“If I get out on the street and I say ‘Don’t shoot drugs,’ they’re going to walk away from me,” Perry said. “I don’t tell people not to use drugs. They’ve been told that for years. I’m concerned with them cleaning their works and not sharing their needles. I just want them to know I am concerned even if they may not be.”

Perry said that although more former intravenous drug abusers are using their own experiences to educate others, many drug addicts are resistant to AIDS education.

“If you talk to them in a way they understand, as candidly as possible, they may hear, they may not,” Perry said. “Maybe when they’re sober, it may register. It’s difficult to talk to people who are high.”

To Perry, solutions lie where problems begin.

“I don’t know how many heterosexual bars there are in San Diego County, but we don’t have educators from the AIDS Project yet going in to talk about AIDS,” she said. “And we’re just scratching the surface of teen-agers growing up in the age of AIDS.”