Multicultural Human Services for AIDS Treatment and Prevention Policy, Perspectives, and Planning

This much-needed book presents an introduction and overview of multicultural AIDS issues in social work practice. In a culturally diverse nation, it is essential that professionals look at AIDS within a cultural context in order to find the most effective treatment and prevention strategies for everyone. Emphasizing this need for a culturally sensitive approach, Multicultural Human Services for AIDS Treatment and Prevention increases social workers’often limited knowledge and experience with various social and ethnic groups. It provides specific suggestions and recommendations for program development and acts as a foundation upon which to build new strategies for policy, research, and practice.

Multicultural Human Services for AIDS Treatment and Prevention emphasizes the importance of encouraging and sharing research that addresses AIDS and minority populations and assessing prevention, education, and behavioral change strategies from culturally specific and relevant perspectives. It includes chapters focusing on African Americans, Native American Indians, Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, and Mexican prostitutes--groups that often suffer disproportionately from poverty and its myriad effects. Some topics discussed in the book are:

• helping clients reduce cultural dissonance
• how to enhance behavior change
• child welfare and permanency planning
• empowerment of clients and health care models
• knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding HIV/AIDS
• cultural contradictions and ambivalence in response to AIDS
  
  Multicultural Human Services for AIDS Treatment and Prevention is an extremely useful and informative book for all professionals in social work and human services who want to be better prepared to help all groups of people. The book is also an ideal text for upper-level social work students studying topics such as multicultural issues in social work practice, AIDS in a cultural context, and health policy and health care systems.