Little River, Arkansas, Group Begins Outreach Program

Young Women in Action (YWIA) is a new HIV/AIDS peer outreach effort in Little River County to educate black and low-income women about the risks and prevention measures for HIV. "It teaches you to be safe… to practice safe sex and use condoms," Shirley Coleman Johnson, a community activist, said of the program, a collaborative effort of the Women's Project, Little River Training Alumni Association and Little River Housing Program. "If somebody wants us to come into their school or church, we'll just come in and talk about AIDS and show our films. Hopefully we can reach somebody through this because it is really serious."

There are "a lot of people who don't know anything about HIV and AIDS," said Tara French, 22, a YWIA participant. "People are not paying attention. They're just running around having sex and not knowing. A lot of teenagers and elderly people aren't educated about what's going on with HIV and AIDS."

"We are seeing more people whose exposure risk is heterosexual as opposed to men who have sex with men or intravenous drug use," said Dr. Nate Smith, Arkansas Department of Health's medical director for infectious diseases. The state is seeing an increase in cases among women, "particularly minority women whose exposure is through heterosexual intercourse," he said.

"The concern is, even though the number of cases has been stable the last couple years, if HIV moves into populations that haven't been our traditional target populations… we could potentially see a lot of new cases," Smith said. In addition, young MSM "are not taking the kind of precautions they were five or 10 years ago and the reason I say that is because we are seeing increases in other sexually transmitted diseases… particularly syphilis and gonorrhea," he said.

Back to other news for August 12, 2005