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conferenceseries.com
October 24-25, 2016 | Valencia, Spain
International Conference on
Environmental Health & Safety
Volume 4, Issue 5 (Suppl) Occup Med Health
ISSN:2329-6879 OMHA, an open access journal Environmental Health 2016
October 24-25, 2016
Firoza Haffejee et al., Occup Med Health Aff 2016, 4:5 (Suppl)
PERCEIVED HIV-RELATED STIGMA IN UNIVERSITY AND HOME COMMUNITY
ENVIRONMENTS: EVIDENCE FROM SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR SCALING UPHIV TESTING
Firoza Haffejeea, Brendan Maughan-Brownb, Thulasizwe Buthelezia and Ayesha BM Kharsanyc
aDurban University of Technology, South Africa
bUniversity of Cape Town, South Africa
cUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Perceived stigma has a negative impact across the HIV care cascade. Our understanding about how perceived stigma varies fromone
environment to another is limited. This study fills an important gap in the literature by assessing how perceived stigma within the
home community environment differs from that in the tertiary education environment. We used a self-administered questionnaire to
obtain data (n=378) on stigmatising attitudes and perceived stigma from students attending a tertiary education institution in South
Africa. Differences in perceived stigma in the university environment compared to the home community environment were assessed.
Levels of reported stigmatising attitudes and discrimination were low among students. Gender differences were observed with a
significantly larger proportion of males (12%) reporting stigmatising attitudes compared to females (1%, p<0.001). Many students
reported perceived stigma in both settings (university: 41%; community: 47%; p=0.09). Among those who reported stigma, the
majority perceived it in both the university and community settings. Correlation analysis indicated a positive relationship between
the perceived stigma scores from each environment (0.62), with a stronger relationship found among males (0.72). Our results lead
to the hypothesis that individual project perceived stigma from one environment to another. This implies that the negative public
health impact of perceived stigma could extend beyond the context in which those perceptions develop. Overall, our results stress the
importance of efforts to reduce perceived stigma. Such efforts could play an important role in improving the relatively poor rates of
HIV testing uptake among younger populations.
Biography
Firoza Haffejee completed her PhD in 2013 at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is currently a senior lecturer in Physiology and Epidemiology at the Durban
University of Technology in South Africa. She runs community engagement projects in Kenneth Gardens, a low socio-economic environment in the city of Durban,
where she has also worked on research projects in collaboration with members of Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research is currently funded by the
National Research Foundation (South Africa).