Building HIV Awareness Among Healthcare Students

Duration : 4 months / 15 March - 15 July 2023

Budget : 151.050 TL

Sponsor : Gilead Sciences

Purpose and Target and Method:

It was aimed to investigate the knowledge levels on HIV and AIDS, behaviours and degree of stigmatization towards people living with HIV, and the factors affecting these behaviours among healthcare students who study at İzmir Katip Çelebi University Faculty of Medicine, which was selected as a pilot institution, and various other universities in İzmir. With the modules that were applied, the aim was to create positive communication and behaviour models by identifying any present behaviour of prejudice and stigmatizing behaviours such as stereotyping among healthcare students, the doctors of the future.

Through the interaction of the students participating in the training with their peers, it was aimed that these positive behaviour models spread primarily to other medical school students and later to their peers within society, and thus; people living with HIV can benefit from health care services more effectively without being exposed to stigmatizing behaviours, effectively access to treatment, contribute to treatment adherence and quality of life.

The project, which was designed in four stages, consisted firstly of 25 health students receiving two full-day informative trainings, measuring their knowledge levels with the pre-post test, organizing a panel in the university, and finally, having about 50 people take an anonymous HIV test.

It was also planned to produce a scientific publication by evaluating the data and outputs obtained from the pretest-posttest conducted within the scope of the project and to create an exemplary model in this regard.

Outputs: 24 healthcare students from İzmir Katip Çelebi University, Dokuz Eylül University, Ege University and Bakırçay University Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Dentistry attended the informative training sessions.

At the end of the training, the participants were also asked to evaluate the training modules and trainers. According to the feedback, 76% of the participants stated that they would recommend the event to a friend or colleague and were very satisfied with the organization, speakers and topic choices.

On May 9, 2023, a "Why does HIV concern me?" panel was held at İKÇÜ Atatürk Training and Research Hospital with the participation of approximately 50 students from the Faculty of Medicine, year 3,4 and 5 students, in which the medical and social aspects of HIV were discussed.

Turkish Project Report: