Black women in the southern United States are less likely to seek HIV prevention and treatment services because they don’t trust the health care system, according to a study in the September/October issue of The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (JANAC) by Schenita Randolph, PhD, MPH, at Duke University School of Nursing. Randolph based her findings on a community-based study led by Carol Golin, MD. Golin, a professor in UNC’s Department of Health Behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and School of Medicine’s Department of Medicine, is an Institute affiliate who directs the Social and Behavioral Research Core at the UNC Center for AIDS Research. Golin led a series of focus groups with African-American women living in low-income housing communities in one small city in the South.
“Dr. Randolph’s findings are critical because they demonstrate women’s own views of the critical and sometimes subtle ways in which systemic racism can have dramatic effects on African-American women’s health through multiple pathways,” says Golin. “This suggests that working to dismantle racism is a fundamental step that is needed to fully address health disparities.”
Golin’s research looks at the development and assessment of behavioral interventions to enhance compliance and health care for persons living with HIV/AIDS and access to care for incarcerated persons.