Countywide : AIDS Education to Be Taken to Streets

Ventura County is launching a program that will send outreach workers to street corners and bars to educate drug and alcohol abusers and their sex partners about AIDS.

The federally funded program to be run by the county’s Public Social Services Agency is expected to begin by mid-December, said Stephen Kaplan, director of PSSA’s department of alcohol and drug programs.

Although it is well known that drug users who share needles are at high risk of contracting human immunodeficiency virus, which causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, Kaplan said all people who abuse alcohol or drugs are more likely than the general population to get the disease.

“We know that they’re more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors, such as unprotected sex and multiple sex partners,” he said.

Kaplan’s department already runs HIV testing and AIDS-education programs at 21 drug and alcohol treatment centers throughout the county.

But the new program will be aimed at drug and alcohol abusers and their sex partners who are out in the community and who have not sought treatment, he said.

“We’re not asking them to come to us. We’re going to go out to them,” he said.

The program will initially focus on certain neighborhoods in Oxnard and Ventura where there are known problems with drug and alcohol abuse. Workers will gradually spread out to other areas of the county, Kaplan said.

Program workers will go to street corners and bars that are known hangouts for people with such problems, he said. After meeting drug and alcohol abusers, program workers will try to educate them about protecting themselves against contracting HIV and encourage them to be tested for the virus at a county health center.

Outreach workers will work with community leaders in the neighborhoods, as well as coordinate with other social service agencies, such as Interface Children and Family Services and Clinicas del Camino Real.