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HIV-AIDS Course, Chapter 9 - Building Your HIV-AIDS and Sexual Education Program

Module by: Fred Mednick

Figure 1: Your own program can meet your needs
Putting it Together
Putting it Together (puttingittogether.jpg)

Strategies for Successful Programs

There are hundreds of reports that describe an overwhelming picture of the devastation that AIDS has brought to our world. However, there are several innovative programs that are making progress against the disease. It is important to note, though, that even the most successful of programs are limited unless:

a) Funding is made available from government sources, NGOs, foundations, and businesses.

b) Policies are created to support fair health treatment for all citizens in an atmosphere that does not punish or stigmatize infected populations.

Successful programs in schools and communities include at least one of the following elements:

  • Teacher training in general and teacher training in HIV-AIDS.
  • Support for the education system itself so that it is sustained, made available to all students, and includes a credible basic edcuation program.
  • Skill-based health education that promotes behavioral change.
  • Special attention to girls - basic education and more leads to lowered infant mortality, higher productivity, fewer risk behaviors.
  • School-based programs that involve youth-friendly services (sports, health, peer activities, use of technology).
  • Focus on reaching all ages of students; the early years are essential, but should not stop there.
  • Inclusion of parents as well as teachers - involving the entire community so that efforts in school are not undone later.
  • Avoidance of stigma towards and associated with HIV-infected people.

UNESCO provides a clear analysis of the elements needed to develop a comprehensive HIV-AIDS education programme:

UNESCO'S Strategy for HIV-AIDS Preventative Education

PDF files below:

UNESCO Strategy

Starting HIV-AIDS Programs 1

Starting HIV-AIDS Programs 2

A special article on stigma associated with HIV-infected people:

Stigma

Worldwide Program Designs

Recommended Reading: Promoting Reproductive Health in Uganda : Evaluation of a National IEC Program. Uganda has made great strides with its comprehensive approach. (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Available only online)

Please read the following website carefully for a specific look at the components of successful programs, worldwide:

International Clearinghouse on Curriculum for HIV/AIDS Education (Online only)

PDF Resources:

Multifaceted Approaches

For Health Educators: Prevention of Infection

For Health Educators: Health Care and HIV - A Nutritional Guide

We have provided a synopsis, below, of various regional success stories. Here are several examples of what various countries are doing:

Zambia: Education for teacher trainees and school children, including anti-AIDS clubs and peer-led education approaches. Focus on community schools that include counseling and integration of HIV-AIDS awareness into service-learning projects.

Vietnam: Skill-based HIV-AIDS awareness program focusing on the facts of AIDS, coupled with an emphasis on tolerance, decision-making skills, and self confidence.

Zimbabwe: The AIDS Action Program for Schools, initiated by the Ministry of Education and Culture develops problem-solving, decision-making, and risk-averting skills. Strong involvement from both government and the church. Concerned about how teachers felt embarrassed teaching topics of sex and HIV, Zimbabwe developed the Auntie Stella health education pack for secondary school students in which the students themselves participate in the materials and design problem-solving activities.

Caribbean: The Health and Family Life Education program focuses on behavioral change by providing students with both facts and role-playing of real-life situations in class.

India: The Better Life Options Program focuses on adolescent girls through a combination of life skills, including literacy and vocational training, support for entering and staying in formal school, family life education, and leadership training.

Peru: This skill-based program focused on empowering youth with knowledge about sexuality and AIDS, toleration of people with AIDS, and prevention behaviors. The program was facilitated by trained teachers and implemented over 7 weekly, two-hour sessions with homework promoting interaction with family, friends, and local health institutions.

Uganda: The education programs have focused on a skills-based approach. Initially, the poor success rate of their health education program inspired innovative leaders to focus more on attitudes and behavioral change. The focus on teacher training (and ease with the material) helped to turn low results into high results.

Backgrounder

Suggested Reading: We STRONGLY suggest a re-reading of the website devoted to the successful and comprehensive program developed in Uganda. (Online only)

Part of the difficulty associated with HIV-AIDS and Sexually-Transmitted Disease curriculum is that the materials themselves seem foreign to the teacher and distant from students' experience. UNESCO recognizes this problem as well and has developed a way to help teachers incorporate best practice and other resources into a program that makes sense on the local level. Here are the resources they provide:

Handbook for Curriculum Planners

There is increasing consensus about the need for AIDS education for young people. Studies have shown that sex and AIDS education may lead to a delay in the onset of sexual activity, and to the use of safer sex practices among those students who are sexually active. However, curriculum planners often lack examples of curricula, classroom activities and learning materials. This resource package has been compiled to assist curriculum planners to design HIV/AIDS/STD education programmes for their own school systems, for students aged between 12 and 16. The program presented in this package is based on participatory methods, as these have been shown to be particularly effective for the teaching of behavioral skills.

Introduction

Introduction

Designing the Program

Designing the Program

Curriculum and Teacher Training Materials

This excellent section is devoted to the tools teachers will need in order to develop the program. It includes surveys with students, communications with and presentations to parents (including parent activities and surveys), peer-group exercises, leadership training exercises, assessment and quiz questions, scenarios and life situations to explore, and a needs analysis for future teacher training programs.

Sample Curriculum and Teacher Training Materials

Programme Evaluation Instruments

In this section, teachers have the resources they need in order to determine if students understand the material, are integrating the material, and are engaging in healthy behaviors. Of course, the surest judge of all is random testing, but that has to be done with the full approval and participation of health and legal authorities.

Programme Evaluation Instruments

Assignment 2: Designing Your Own Program

We are asking you to design, in broad terms, an HIV-AIDS Education program for your community. Please see the instructions on the ways in which you can provide us with the information (email, Personal File Storage, online survey, or by post).

Please follow the outline below, also repeated as an assignment for the Personal File Storage and included in the online survey:

Based upon what you have read, Teachers Without Borders would like you to create a program that meets your specific, regional needs.

Your Name

Project Leadership (Name, Email Address):

Country:

Program Title:

Outcome Measurement (Please see description on CD/Online). Please feel free to send in other pages via email, Personal File Storage, or by post:

How will this program be sustained? Parents? School? Political pressure?

What activities will engage students (beyond drilling them with facts) :

Will the program take place alongside of sports? arts? :

Will the program take place after school or part of the school program?

How does this program expand existing HIV-AIDS programs or replace it?

Have students design a logo. Describe it here and send it to us via an email attachment, in the post, or as a file you post to your Personal File Storage:

How will students serve as ambassadors to spread the word of the program?

What might the incentives be for youth to join this group?

Describe other possible incentives for students to participate :

How will student leadership be rewarded?

HIV-AIDS Assignment 2

New Roles for the Ministry of Education

The World Bank's report, "Education and HIV-AIDS: A Window of Hope," provides a guideline for Ministries of Education to make a positive impact on the AIDS crisis, summarized below:

Item Action
POLICY
Argue the case for education as an urgent national priority and as a "high return on investment" sector that should be adequately funded, highlighing its crucial role in HIV-AIDS prevention and the grave dangers of inaction
Ensure - and enforce - policies that make schools safe havens for children, including zero tolerance of sexual harassment and other inappropriate or criminal behavior, including on the part of teachers and school officials.
Ensure close collaboration with other sectors (especially health, communications, and ministries dealing with youth affairs), recognizing that the fight against HIV/AIDS can only be won with multi-sectoral efforts
Engage in systematic planning, developing the needed skills and methods and identifying key restraints to realize objecitves as well as cost-effective ways to overcome the constraints.
Ensure adequate arrangements for monitoring and evaluation, to measure not only progress in education outcomes but also the impact and spread of HIV/AIDS as well as the impact of preventative measures.
SUPPLY and QUALITY
Ensure an adequate supply of teachers, compensating for higher teacher mortality and absenteeism by increasing teacher training rates including through greater reliance on distance education; reducing the length of training courses; expanding in-service training to maintain quality; and recruiting teachers from non-traditional sources.
Strengthen the delivery of prevention education by expanding in-service training in this area, emphasizing participatory and other innovative teaching methods that promote the teaching of life skills aimed at behavioral change; training youth (including those out of school) to be peer educators and counselors, and linking programs with health services.
Adapt curriculum and learning materials, including health education messages early on and sustaining them throughout the education system, and focusing health education on life skills approaches that emphasize behavioral change and which are grade- and age-specific.
Ensure an adequate supply of classrooms, identifying innovative scheduling alternatives where constrained resources limit new construction in order to keep pace with increases in the number of school-age children
DEMAND and ACCESS
Redouble efforts to ensure access to and completion of girls' schooling, with attention to water and sanitation needs and particular emphasis on orphans and other vulnerable children, through bursaries and other established approaches.
Expand reliance on innovative approaches to reach out-of-school children, exploring distance education as well as community schools and other non-formal alternatives to provide education to rural or other inaccessible areas, for counteracting the flight of teachers to urban areas (partly to avail themselves of better health facilities).

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