Abstract

Barbershops and salons used as effective community sites to provide HIV/AIDS health education in brooklyn communities

Olusola Adeonigbagbe, MPH¹, Faven Araya, MPH, DrPH(c)², Briana West, MPH¹ and Kristelle Pierre, MPH¹
(1)The Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, Brooklyn, NY, (2)Arthur Ashe Institute For Urban Health, Brooklyn, NY

APHA 2024 Annual Meeting and Expo

Since the Civil Rights Movement, barber shops and hair salons in predominantly black neighborhoods in New York City have become a gathering hub for black men and women to comfortably discuss critical issues directly impacting their daily lives. In 2022, the cases of HIV in Brooklyn were at a rate of 17.1 per 100,000 persons compared to the NYC overall rate of 19.2 per 100,000 persons. Black men and women are 3.4X and 14.8X more likely respectively to be diagnosed with HIV compared to their white counterparts. Due to the trusted relationships between barbers/stylists and their clients, barbers/stylists are primed to be trained by community-based organizations as lay health advocates in order to disseminate reliable health information to the community. Addressing the health disparities in HIV cases for blacks residing in Brooklyn requires a comprehensive approach involving increased access to health education and a culturally tailored HIV curriculum.

A comprehensive HIV/AIDs health education program was developed using a community based participatory research approach with three overarching goals: to facilitate culturally tailored information, to address the disproportionately high HIV/AIDS rate in Brooklyn, and to expand outreach to other boroughs.

A culturally tailored health education curriculum was created that effectively disseminated important information to educate the Brooklyn community on HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C, mental health outcomes, and stigma. Three community partnerships were established, and six in-person workshops were conducted reaching 80 community members with a collection of 54 post survey responses. Participants were assessed on their perception in understanding preventable HIV measures with 83% of the respondents strongly agreeing that the workshops had increased their knowledge and with more than half of the total participants (66%) saying that they were more than likely to recommend the workshops to their friends and family.

Barbershops and hair salons are an effective community site for CBOs to provide vital information about HIV/AIDS related topics to blacks residing in Brooklyn by recruiting barbers/stylists as lay health advocates.

It is recommended to replicate and scale these efforts within similar urban settings to address HIV/AIDS disparities.

Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs Advocacy for health and health education Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs