Bridging the Knowledge Gap: How Education Can Reduce HIV-Related Stigma among Youth

Abstract

Among youths, HIV-related stigma is one of the most difficult forms of social obstacles to successful HIV prevention, testing, and treatment. Although biomedical progress has improved over decades, misinformation and negative social attitudes still marginalize people living with HIV (PLHIV), do not encourage open discussion and health-seeking behaviors. Education has generally been identified to be a potent instrument in knowledge, attitude, and social norms development, but there still exist gaps in comprehending its quantitative significance in eliminating the HIV related stigma among the youth. The research design taken in this study is a quantitative cross-sectional research design in order to investigate the degree of HIV-related knowledge among the youth and to determine its correlation with HIV-related stigma. The research results are achieved by way of a structured questionnaire assessing HIV knowledge and stigmatizing attitudes and analyzing them with the help of descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. It is assumed that the results will show that HIV-related knowledge and stigma are significantly negatively related, with the higher the level of accurate knowledge, the lower the attitude of stigmatizing. The research makes its contribution to the existing body of work, as it empirically supports the significance of educational interventions in stigma reduction, and presents evidence-based suggestions in case teachers, policymakers, and other professionals involved in the field of the practice of public health can develop youth-focused programs on HIV education.