Testing the efficacy of an HIV stigma reduction intervention with medical students in Puerto Rico: the SPACES project.

INTRODUCTION: Stigma associated with HIV has been documented as a barrier for accessing quality health-related services. When the stigma manifests in the health care setting, people living with HIV receive substandard services or even be denied care altogether. Although the consequences of HIV stigma have been documented extensively, efforts to reduce these negative attitudes have been scarce. Interventions to reduce HIV stigma should be implemented as part of the formal training of future health care professionals. The interventions that have been tested with health care professionals and published have several limitations that must be surpassed (i.e. lack of comparison groups in research designs and longitudinal follow-up data). Furthermore, Latino health care professionals have been absent from these intervention efforts even though the epidemic has affected this population disproportionately.

METHODS: In this article, we describe an intervention developed to reduce HIV stigma among medical students in Puerto Rico. A total of 507 medical students were randomly introduced into our intervention and control conditions.

RESULTS: The results show statistically significant differences between the intervention and control groups; intervention group participants had lower HIV stigma levels than control participants after the intervention. In addition, differences in HIV stigma levels between the groups were sustained for a 12-month period.

CONCLUSION: The results of our study demonstrate the efficacy of the modes of intervention developed by us and serve as a new training tool for future health care professionals with regard to stigma reduction.