When Culture and Preventative Care Collide
Harambee is a Kiswahili word that calls community members to work together.
In an effort to address barriers to HIV testing faced by local African immigrant communities, a UW team led by Shukri Hassan, Rena Patel, and Roxanne Kerani (Allergy and Infectious Diseases) collaborated with the Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean health boards in King County to design and implement a community-based participatory research project, known as Harambee!
The first phase of this project achieved a more than 50% uptake of HIV testing. But, their qualitative study and interactions with community partners revealed they needed to prioritize HIV-related stigma reduction first.
In phase 2.0 they identified a number of factors that shape attitudes of Somali, Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrant communities and deter them from seeking preventative care. Overall, four major themes emerged: (1) cultural beliefs and attitudes shaping community views of health care, (2) religious beliefs/views on manifestation of illness (3) immigrant shared experiences, and (4) structural barriers related to health systems.
Phase 3.0 will incorporate messaging around preventative health care into an HIV stigma reduction intervention led by religious and other community leaders in the King County Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean communities.