AIDS Awareness Effort Aimed at Women Who Risk It

Thousands of women at high risk of contracting AIDS--prostitutes and women who have sex with intravenous drug users or bisexual men--are the target of a federally funded $3.4-million awareness program planned for Los Angeles, Phoenix and Boston.

Project director Sheila Namir of the California School of Professional Psychology warned Tuesday that unless preventive action is taken, AIDS may ultimately become the primary cause of death among all women of child-bearing age.

“Despite recent information, a commonly held myth is that AIDS is a disease of gay men and drug addicts,” Namir told a news conference. “In reality, we know that AIDS is the leading cause of death among women aged 25 to 28 in New York City.”

Ominous Trend

Namir said that 7% of the nation’s current 45,000 AIDS patients--about 3,150 cases--are women, and present indications are that about 27,000 women could be victims of the disease by 1991. Namir is hopeful that intervention will interrupt the trend.

“Until we have an AIDS vaccine, education is the only way to prevent this dreaded disease,” she said. Under terms of a three-year agreement with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the California School of Professional Psychology is developing a model outreach program to be expanded from the three original cities to the entire nation.

Connell F. Persico, provost of CSPP’s Los Angeles campus, said Los Angeles, Phoenix and Boston were selected because of their high percentage of women at risk of AIDS, lack of current intervention programs for women and high levels of prostitution and intravenous drug users.

In Los Angeles, the project will be centered in Pacoima, East Los Angeles, South-Central Los Angeles and the Inglewood-Westminster area.

The plan is to designate five local agencies, such as public health clinics, drug treatment centers, church organizations, or jails and runaway shelters in each city, to implement the project. They will be asked to identify “natural helpers.”

“These are women who are natural leaders in their own communities--women who will reach out to other women like themselves in order to get the education and counseling they need to prevent AIDS,” Namir said. “They will be hired and will become part of intervention teams. They will return to their communities and recruit new women to become involved in the project.”

Namir said 80% of male intravenous drug users relate sexually to women who do not use drugs. As a result, she said, many women may not be aware that they risk AIDS through sexual relations.

“We will try to reach these women, educate them and help them protect themselves against contracting the AIDS virus,” Namir said. “This involves practicing safer sex and helping them in their social skills so that they can negotiate safer sex practices and more open and trusting relationships with their partners.

“We know that in this country 28% of women with AIDS contracted it through heterosexual contact. And that 30% of the women in Los Angeles who have AIDS contracted it that way. We also know, and this is most discouraging, that 11% of women nationwide and 18% in Los Angeles who have AIDS do not even know how they contracted it.”