Do Local Religious Communities Help or Hurt the AIDS Response?

The answer, of course, is “Yes, both.” Some help and some hurt and some are neutral. The more important questions are, “How many are helping? How many are hurting?” In high-burden areas, are most of the local religious communities helpful or are most harmful? This is especially important with respect to stigma. Unless there are more helpful religious communities than harmful ones, stigma is likely to continue to be a significant barrier to effectively fighting the epidemic.

Panelists from both the losing and winning futures will talk about the importance of this information. Here is a conversation from an expert panel in 2030 called “How We Lost the War Against AIDS”. Rev. Emily Morgan is the leader of a consortium of Christian NGOs. Imam Achmed Karume is the leader of a group of HIV+ religious leaders.

REV. MORGAN  You know, there were a lot of faith leaders and communities who actually did a pretty good job of educating, of treating people with dignity and respect, of providing counseling and support, of not judging, of not stigmatizing.  They worked hard at it.  They had specific programs aimed at eliminating stigma.

IMAM KARUME  Yes, I know.  But not enough of them.

REV. MORGAN  Actually, it’s really hard to know how many there were.  We had lots of studies that showed the benefit of programs to reduce stigma in faith communities, but a lot of that was anecdotal.  I do remember a study done maybe six or seven years ago.  They identified some criteria for when a faith community is actively increasing stigma or actively decreasing stigma.  Then they did surveys in several African countries, trying to come up with the percentage of the population that regularly worships at a faith community that increases stigma or decreases stigma.  … To their surprise, they found that something like 40% of the population worshipped at faith communities that hurt and less than 10% at faith communities that helped.  If we wanted to really make a dent in stigma, we needed those numbers swapped.  We needed a lot more non-stigmatizers and a lot fewer stigmatizers.

Rev. Morgan made similar comments in a different future in which the 2030 panel is called “How We Won the War Against AIDS”.

REV. MORGAN  I wish we had had more data about what local faith communities were doing.  We had lots of anecdotal evidence about the benefit of programs to reduce stigma in faith communities, but we didn’t actually know how many local faith communities were doing what.  How many were helping, and how many were hurting?  Then somebody did a nice study maybe nine or ten years ago.  They identified some criteria to distinguish between faith communities that were actively increasing stigma and faith communities that were actively decreasing stigma.  Then they did surveys in several African countries, trying to come up with the percentage of the population that regularly worships at a faith community that increases stigma or decreases stigma.  They found that it was an even split, about 35% each for increasing stigma or decreasing stigma, with the other 30% not worshipping regularly.  Then they did a similar study a few years later and found that close to 60% of the population worshipped at faith communities that helped.  So that second study showed the dramatic change that we’ve been talking about, with local faith communities becoming part of the solution, not the problem.

So let me suggest a challenge. Let’s set a target of 50% by 2030. In high-burden countries, more than half of the population worships regularly at religious communities that actively fight stigma.

It will take some good research to make sure we can measure this well, and it will take some hard work to achieve this target, but if we do, it will go a long way toward reducing the effect of stigma on the AIDS epidemic.