Experiences of HIV stigma in rural Southern religious settings

ABSTRACT

Experiences of stigma, including stigma in religious settings, among individuals who are HIV positive have been widely documented. However, research related to stigma has predominantly focussed on urban locations. As a result, stigma incurred via religious settings in non-urban areas has been underexplored. The aim of this study is to uncover the experiences of individuals who are HIV positive with religious institutions, leaders and congregants in the non-urban American South. A total of 22 participants were interviewed. Experiences with stigma were pervasive with participants often describing anticipation of future stigma (often based on past negative experiences), the experience of stigma, and, for some participants, intersectional or layered stigma related to being both gay, or being perceived as gay, and HIV positive. Our findings suggest that the conditions of the non-urban setting in which this research took place made specific contributions to participants’ experiences of stigma.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV stigma
• HIV
• religion
• Deep South
• rural

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Caleb Chadwick, MEd, is a doctoral candidate in Georgia State University's Department of Counseling and Psychological Services. Mr Chadwick received his MEd from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College. His research focuses on minority stress with a particular interest in the experiences of LGBTQ communities, intersecting marginalized identities, and factors related to HIV health and risk.

Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Social Medicine at UNC – Chapel Hill, as well as a core faculty member in the UNC Center for Health Equity Research. She received her PhD in Community, Research, and Action at Vanderbilt University and then completed a NIDA T32 postdoctoral fellowship at the Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School. Dr Brinkley-Rubinstein's research focuses on incarceration and HIV and the ways in which incarceration can impact health outcomes. Her recent work explores the impact of incarceration on overdose and the implementation of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis programmes in criminal justice settings.

Mark McCormack, PhD, serves as the EDUCAUSE Senior Director of Analytics & Research, overseeing the association's member-facing data and analytics services (Core Data Service, ETRAC) and portfolio of original research projects. Before coming to EDUCAUSE, Mark served in leadership and research positions for professional associations and other non-profit organizations across a variety of spheres, including higher education, K-12 education, youth development, performing arts, and community development. His research has appeared in the Leadership & Organizational Development Journal, the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Education, the Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, and the APA Handbook of Community Psychology, among other journals and edited volumes. Mark earned his PhD in Community Psychology from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University.

Dr Abbey Mann is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at East Tennessee State University's Quillen College of Medicine. She has a PhD and MS in Community Research and Action from Vanderbilt University and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Bryn Mawr College. She conducts mixed-methods and community-based research on the ways in which stigma affect access to care for a number of groups including sexual minority populations, gender minority populations, and those with substance use disorders.

ORCID

Caleb N. Chadwick http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2457-1989