AIDS at 30: Implications for Social Work Education

Abstract

This article reviews themes and changes in the teaching of HIV/AIDS content in social work programs over the last 30 years. Social work education in the first decade of the epidemic was largely focused on helping clients in the death and dying process, while medical and pharmaceutical advancements in the mid 1990s drastically altered the roles of social work. As social work education prepares students to face the fourth decade of the AIDS epidemic, three areas of cross-curricular intersection are highlighted: HIV/AIDS as an issue of social, racial, and economic justice; the global AIDS epidemic in the context of international social work; and the social work response to HIV/AIDS in older adults.

HIV/AIDS knowledge and attitudes among social work students: A comparative study

“…This dearth of research on the subject is problematic because social workers have privileged access to not only the most affected but also the most marginalised populations of PLHIV/AIDS and must, therefore, be able to respond adequately to those populations’ prevention and intervention needs (Bowen, 2013). This is all the more so because the challenges which the pandemic presents continue to evolve, notably due to the ageing of infected populations (Beuthin et al, 2015; Hasse et al, 2011) and because social representations of the disease remain in flux (Goodwin et al, 2004; Labra, 2015).…”