Religious congregations' involvement in HIV: a case study approach

Abstract

Comparative case studies were used to explore religious congregations' HIV involvement, including types and extent of activities, interaction with external organizations or individuals, and how activities were initiated and have changed over time. The cases included 14 congregations in Los Angeles County representing diverse faith traditions and races-ethnicities. Activities fell into three broad categories: (1) prevention and education; (2) care and support; and (3) awareness and advocacy. Congregations that engaged early in the epidemic focused on care and support while those that became involved later focused on prevention and education. Most congregations interacted with external organizations or individuals to conduct their HIV activities, but promoting abstinence and teaching about condoms were conducted without external involvement. Opportunities exist for congregations to help address a variety of HIV-related needs. However, activities that are mission-congruent, such as providing pastoral care for people with HIV, raising HIV awareness, and promoting HIV testing, appear easier for congregations to undertake than activities aimed at harm reduction.

Fig. 1

Cluster analysis of HIV activities that tend to co-occur within a congregation. Notes: (1) The graph maps positive match scores between pairs of HIV activities, which indicate the number of times that both activities co-occurred in a congregation as a percentage of the total number of occurrences. The layout of activities is based on a “spring embedding” algorithm that places activities with the highest match scores to one another closest in the graph [55]. (2) The three main clusters of HIV activities that tend to co-occur together were identified using a k-means optimization technique applied to the positive match scores [56]. We indicate the results of the k-means analysis on the graph by encircling the activities that fell within each cluster using overlaid shading