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Lesson 4: Target Populations, Harm Reduction, and Preventive Practices

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Lessons

  1. Lesson 1: Early AIDS History and Emerging Infectious Diseases

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    The first lesson explores how historical interpretations of AIDS changed dramatically in the first years after its identification, just as our understanding of other infectious diseases have shifted and evolved over time. Close

  2. Lesson 2: U.S. Government (In)Action

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    The second lesson focuses on analysis and interpretation of the government’s response to the AIDS epidemic following its emergence.Close

  3. Lesson 3: Visual Culture and Public Health Posters

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    The third lesson explores the subject of visual culture and the role of imagery in the history of responses to AIDS by deconstructing the various strategies used in public health posters as tools of public education designed to encourage disease prevention.Close

  4. Lesson 4: Target Populations, Harm Reduction, and Preventive Practices

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    The fourth lesson focuses on analysis of how public health officials and activists created messages designed for target populations. Close

  5. Lesson 5: Doing Science, Making Myths

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    The fifth lesson examines how and why scientists struggled to understand AIDS in the 1980s. Against the backdrop of fear and misunderstanding that permeated society, scientists’ initial findings sometimes produced unintended political consequences. Close

  6. Lesson 6: Fight Back, Fight AIDS

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    The final lesson explores how AIDS presented unprecedented challenges and opportunities for activists. The lesson pays particular attention to how activism and advocacy shaped public policy and responses to AIDS.Close

  7. About the Author

Introduction

This lesson extends the analysis of public health posters begun in Lesson 3 by asking students to critically evaluate the techniques used by public health officials and advocacy groups in efforts to reach specific target populations. The lesson begins with Gregory Herek’s discussion of AIDS and stigma, which is designed to expose students to a variety of social, psychological, and demographic variables that have been found to correlate with AIDS-related attitudes. Allan M. Brandt argues that the way a society responds to problems of disease reveals its deepest cultural, social, and moral values. His essay analyzes the process by which social and cultural forces affect our understanding of disease—the "social construction of disease"—and examines several analogues to the contemporary health crisis.

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Students should complete the secondary source readings before returning to the online exhibition AIDS, Posters, and Stories of Public Health: A People’s History of a Pandemic. Students should be asked to analyze AIDS posters to deconstruct the ways in which values shape the strategies and content of campaigns designed to target specific populations. Discussion questions may be provided to students in advance. The digital galleries, “Minority AIDS Project,” “Harm Reduction/Clean Needles,” “Native People Respond to HIV/AIDS,” and “Please Be Safe,” address different themes from the secondary readings.  Students should consult the discussion questions when browsing these galleries before visiting the exhibition sections in Visual Culture and Public Health Posters titled “Target Populations,” “Living with HIV/AIDS,” and “Solidarity and Human Rights.” Display of posters from these galleries can also be used to stimulate in-class discussions. Close

Materials

Reading

 

 

Discussion Questions

  1. How and why have people with AIDS been the targets of stigma? What social, psychological, and demographic variables have been found to correlate with AIDS-related attitudes and why? How has AIDS stigma hindered societal response to the epidemic?
  2. Consider and evaluate Brandt’s explanation for the social attitudes and stigma associated with AIDS. How did AIDS highlight a central tension between the rights of the individual to fundamental civil liberties and the notion of the public good and the role of the state in assuring public welfare? Why is it important to understand the cultural context in analyzing the various responses to AIDS?
  3. What were the various aims, messages, and strategies that influenced the content and design of AIDS posters that addressed specific target populations? What techniques were used to appeal to certain groups? How and why was harm reduction adopted as a strategy? What preventive behaviors were promoted and how?