Acting on AIDS : Role-Playing Program Educates County Managers on the Disease in Workplace

In coming months, about 500 Ventura County employees will role-play some of the most difficult workplace situations imaginable.

They will picture themselves confronting an employee with AIDS whose productivity has been compromised by illness. They will play out scenarios where co-workers refuse to share office space with someone who has AIDS. Or they will face the worst situation of all: being the person with the deadly disease who wants desperately to hang onto a job.

Hardly customary water-cooler conversation, the role-playing is part of a new mandatory program--the first of its kind in California--underway to educate county managers about AIDS and HIV in the workplace. The program will cost the county $20 per manager, or a total of about $12,000, county officials said.

Dr. Gary Feldman, the county’s chief public health officer, hopes the idea catches on--not just to other government agencies, but to the private sector as well.

“In a sense we are being, I hope at least a little, evangelists,” Feldman said.

The three-hour program, to be conducted in 12 sessions to keep the groups small and personal, will be led by teams from the Pacific AIDS Education and Training Center, part of the USC School of Medicine. The idea is not necessarily to give county managers a primer on acquired immune deficiency syndrome and the human immunodeficiency virus, but rather to help them understand the specific workplace issues associated with the disease, replacing discrimination with compassion, Feldman said.

“This is a very exciting approach,” he said. “It’s very emotional, expressive approach, rather than a didactic AIDS-101 course.”

Wednesday, the county kicked off the program with an introductory presentation for its top managers at the government center. Attorney David Schulman, who works for the Los Angeles city attorney’s AIDS/HIV discrimination unit, led the discussion.

“Remember, you folks don’t have to be AIDS experts,” Schulman said. “You just need to know when to let the alarm bells go off to go and get an AIDS expert.”

The number of AIDS cases in Ventura County is relatively low, with 559 people suffering from the disease and 900 to 1,200 more estimated to be HIV-positive, according to county health statistics. But Feldman said low numbers should not slow education efforts.

“We’re interested in keeping things like that,” he said.

There are no statistics available on how many of the county’s 7,000 employees have been infected with the virus, but Feldman said he knows of several staff members with AIDS. There could be many more, he said.

Wednesday’s session included a look at a videotape of actors playing out various situations. The tape will serve as the launching pad for workshops.

On the tape, an engineer named Ann who has the AIDS virus coughs her way through an office while uneasy co-workers watch.

Ann’s illness has made it hard for her to meet deadlines and prompted a young pregnant woman she works with to ask for a transfer out of the coughing zone. The office supervisor, Maggie, tries to soothe the pregnant woman’s baseless fears and gently suggests a less strenuous desk job for Ann.

Schulman said county employees will learn in the sessions to look at someone such as Ann just as they would a colleague with cancer or some other life-threatening disease. They will be shown that they don’t need new policies to help them deal with AIDS, just the understanding that the old policies against discrimination apply, regardless of what the illness is.

As for the pregnant co-worker on the tape who wants a transfer because she thinks Ann’s cough might give her AIDS, she needs an education about discrimination, facilitators said.

“The issue there is that her fear is an unreasonable one,” said Jerry Gates, director of Pacific AIDS Education and Training Center. “It’s her problem. It’s the same as if she came in and said, ‘I don’t want to work with blacks or with Jews.’ ”