How to Help the Older Population With HIV

HIV in the Older Population To Congress: It has come to the attention of the medical community that enough is not being done to help the older population of HIV-infected individuals. This population makes up 1/4th of the total population of persons infected with HIV (CDC, 2016). In order to protect this population and to help to mitigate the risk of spreading HIV, there are a number of steps recommended to Congress that Congress can implement as part of a national policy to address the issue facing the older HIV population.

These steps are the following: Establish more HIV clinics in inner city neighborhoods Address housing, medical care, educational and financial assistance issues related to older populations needs Set up a special fund that can be used to provide financial assistance for older HIV-infected adults Support the medical community with direct grants and subsidies that go to providing free counseling and coping mechanisms Develop and implement a nationwide educational prevention guide for older HIV-infected adults Enable social scientists through grants and the necessary funding to research the lives of older individuals who live with HIV This research can help doctors to develop the right kind of medication and the appropriate method of helping these individuals This research can help health care providers to enhance the quality of life of these individuals These interventions would help to address the needs of the older population by contributing directly to their well-being, their understanding the risks they face, and their quality of life.

By establishing more HIV clinics in inner city neighborhoods, the older population can be more adequately treated. Older people tend to be isolated in their communities and are not as active in pursuing clinics that are not nearby. By opening more clinics in inner city neighborhoods where older people reside, this section of the community can be more capably served. This intervention is modeled after the idea that if the patient will not come to the office then the office has to go to the patient.

Clinics can be an effective strategy for helping patients overall by providing screenings and information on how to reduce the risk of spreading AIDS. Information can be disseminated in the form of easy to read literature such as pamphlets and newsletters. Screenings can be provided, which is something that can help to identify HIV in older persons before it is too late. Many older persons have HIV and do not even realize it. More clinics can be an effective solution to alleviating this problem.

With support from Congress, the medical community could have the necessary funds to facilitate this risk-reduction effort and help to save hundreds of thousands of lives every year. It is also essential that Congress assist the medical community in address housing, medical care, educational and financial assistance issues related to older populations needs regarding HIV infection. Housing issues are a major concern for older persons who are infected with HIV as they are fearful that communities will reject them if their condition is known.

There is still a great deal of taboo regarding HIV even though it is a manageable condition if caught in time (AIDS, 2015). Thus older people can be helped if their housing needs can be addressed and they know that there is a community of caring individuals with which they can live that will not exclude them or shun them just because of the HIV.

At the same time, the medical care that they need cannot be provided without greater intervention on the part of the medical community -- and this means providing outreach. Congress can facilitate an outreach program that allows the medical community to develop seminars and free talks, advertising campaigns and free testing campaigns that can target the older population in an effort to help them to be more aware and to help them find the treatment they need if they are infected.

Such campaigns are very successful in nations where AIDS is a major factor, such as in South Africa, and a similar model could be developed and utilized for the U.S. Congress's role in this endeavor would be to help fund and develop the campaign by providing the necessary financial backing for it as well as the network for spreading the message throughout the general public.

In this manner, Congress could assist the medical community by establishing a special fund which could be used to provide financial support for older persons with HIV. Even though it is illegal to deny individuals a position in the labor force because of HIV infection, the fact is that taboos surrounding HIV and AIDS still exist and there are many ways of showing prejudice towards infected individuals.

Older persons who are infected are less likely to find work than younger persons specifically because they already feel marginalized and outcast by a society that elevates and idealizes youth (Population Reference Bureau, 2009). Congress could further support the medical community with direct grants and subsidies that go to providing free counseling and coping mechanisms for older persons. These could include sessions involving cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) that helps individuals develop more positive goals and orient them into their lives.

This could be utilized for older persons who have problems mitigating risky behavior in their own lives. It could also go to testing, clinics, literature and counseling sessions that can help older persons trying to cope with the reality of being HIV-positive. These grants could also fund a nationwide educational prevention guide for older HIV-positive persons. The prevention guide would provide knowledge about how to mitigate the risk of spreading or contracting HIV.

These guides could be stocked in new and old clinics and sent out with newsletters as part of an overall macro-strategy to help older persons become more educated about HIV. Finally, Congress could help to enable social scientists to study the lives of older individuals who are HIV-positive in order to better understand their needs and the ways in which they can best be helped. Research grants are very important to social science because without them, studies cannot be performed.

Funding plays an essential role in the advancement of knowledge and by earmarking taxpayer dollars to go to the expansion of knowledge in this sector, Congress will be playing a major role in helping the older population. Moreover, this research can be highly effective in helping doctors to better know the right kind of medications to give to older persons and the appropriate interventions that can be used to help.

Follow-up studies that examine long-term results of patients that have been using specific medications can provide extensive knowledge as to the quality of life that these patients are experiencing and whether these medications should be applied in other situations or to other patients. Doctors can benefit greatly from these studies, which can also be used to benefit pharmaceutical industries as they are the drug manufacturers who produce the drugs that patients will use.

An entire health care industry, therefore, can benefit from these studies and, as a result, the economy overall could be supported by this.