Navigating Life with HIV: The Lived Experiences of Youth Living with HIV

Youth and young adults living with HIV, between the ages of 15 and 29 represent one-quarter of the new infection rates in Canada, but little is known about the safer sex practices, HIV disclosure processes and coping mechanisms used by this important but often neglected group to manage the every day realities of living with HIV. The primary objectives of this study were to gather qualitative data about the lived experiences of Canadian youth who are living with HIV and enhance our understanding of their experiences of becoming HIV-positive, navigating issues related to safer sex and HIV disclosure, and managing life as someone living with HIV. This research employed a phenomenological approach to data collection and analysis to understand the lived experiences of participants. This study utilized qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. Eighteen youth living with HIV (14 males, 3 females and 1 transgender female) between the ages of 22 and 29 were recruited for this study through AIDS Service Organizations in Ontario and British Columbia. Each participant engaged in an in-depth individual interview. The findings from this study highlight four global themes that were representative of the lived experience of what it means to live with HIV for the youth in this study. Becoming HIV-Positive includes the participants’ perspectives regarding being diagnosed with HIV and the impact of finding out they are HIV-positive, which included isolation, depression and thoughts about suicide. Navigating HIV focuses on how the participants’ lives have changed since they found out they have HIV, including coming to terms with being HIV-positive, learning to negotiate dating and other relationships, and determining responsibility for condom use. HIV Disclosure Management features the participants’ experiences regarding the management of disclosing or not disclosing their HIV status within various relationships. Finding New Meaning in Life After HIV Diagnosis focused on how the participants have found or made new meaning in their lives since becoming HIV-positive, including transforming their lives, creating positive changes and future hopes. The findings from this study contribute new knowledge and provide us with a detailed understanding of the lives of youth living with HIV, beginning from when they found out their HIV status through to the many challenges associated with being HIV-positive, and the strategies they use to manage living with HIV

Orphanhood, informal orphan caregiving and the impact of community-based organizations in the context of HIV/AIDS, in Nyanza, Kenya.

The purpose of this study was to examine the stressors the orphans and informal orphan caregivers were experiencing following the death of the orphans\u27 parent(s), their coping strategies and the care and support provided by community based organizations (CBOs), in the context of HIV/AIDS in Nyanza, Kenya. This study was informed by conceptual realms within the Stress Process theory. Focus group discussions with orphans (thirty-one participants) and CBO members (16 participants) and in-depth interviews with informal orphan caregivers (4 participants) and CBO leaders (2 participants) were used in this study. This study makes a contribution to the stress process literature by extending our understanding on issues related to orphanhood and orphan caregiving in a developing country in the context of HIV/AIDS and by showing how primary and secondary stressors experienced by orphans and caregivers are manifested into other stressors. It also provides evidence of coping strategies used by orphans and informal orphan caregivers. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .L37. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-01, page: 0171. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004

Technology design and power: freedom and control in communication networks

The design of technologies with particular sets of affordances for user action reflects and embeds particular sociopolitical values in the technological artefacts themselves. In relation to networked communication technologies like the Internet, design values of openness and decentralization accord with the hegemonic value of freedom as an inherently positive social and political concept. Yet freedom is also an elastic concept that contains the possibility for the freedom of powerful interests to exert controls – technological, state and legal – over the very networks designed to facilitate freedom. This article reviews how such controls are made manifest, with a particular focus on the role of technology design, in the areas of surveillance, censorship and intellectual property. It then concludes by addressing how such controls might be resisted using the affordances of open and decentralized networks. The interplay between freedom and control in communication networks is crucial for the construction of contemporary modes of citizenship, publics and participation

Closing the Gap: Rural Women\u27s Organizations and Rural Women\u27s Health in Canada

This OWHN EBulletin is a synopsis of Closing the Gap a project of the Rural Women Making Change Research Alliance that addressed the unique and often under researched issues women in rural communities experience. Rural women are disproportionately affected by worse health outcomes that are caused in part by issues of poverty and inaccessible health and social services. This EBulletin will look at how Rural Women’s Organizations (RWOs) fill the needed gap in services, but also how issues of cutbacks to RWOs in particular negatively affect the health of rural women in Canada

Challenges of a pandemic: HIV/AIDS-related problems affecting Kenyan widows

The paper reports the findings of a qualitative study using focus group discussions and in-depth interviews about the challenges faced by widows as they confront the direct and indirect impacts of HIV/AIDS in Nyanza, Kenya. Two focus groups were conducted with widows from two community-based organizations. This was followed by in-depth interviews with four members and two leaders from each of the community-based organizations. The contents were analysed using grounded theory. The findings reveal several challenges encountered by widows in their struggles with the direct and indirect impacts of HIV/AIDS. Widows who know or do not know their HIV status are conscious about the possibility of contracting or transmitting the virus. Wife inheritance (a Luo custom), emerged as an outstanding issue for the widows in the context of HIV/AIDS transmission. The widows employ various strategies to resist being inherited. Widows in the current epidemic navigate issues of sexuality in various ways, such as insisting their partners use condoms or permanently abstaining from sexual intercourse.HIV/AIDS Widows Wife inheritance Kenya

Transconductance and mobility behaviors in UTB SOI MOSFETs with standard and thin BOX

In this paper, we analyze the effects of the front and back interfaces on the transport properties in undoped ultra-thin body (UTB) SOI MOSFETs with standard and ultra-thin buried oxides (BOX), using measurements of the transconductance, gate-to-channel capacitance and carrier mobility at various back gate biases

L'éducation aux médias à l'ère numérique

Affirmer que nous vivons dans une société hautement médiatisée est désormais un truisme. Il n'est pratiquement pas de sphères de nos existences qui ne soient affectées par les médias. Les dispositifs par lesquels nous recevons et émettons de l'information se connectent entre eux, de même qu'avec les objets de nos environnements quotidiens et les réseaux mondiaux numériques. Ces dispositifs - et les contenus qu'ils véhiculent - nous suivent jusque dans notre intimité, s'insérant dans nos amitiés, nos relations professionnelles et nos amours. Dès lors, une maîtrise minimale de ces technologies devient une condition à l'insertion sociale et économique. L'accès aux soins de santé, à l'éducation, à l'information, aux loisirs et à l'emploi impose maintenant comme exigence la capacité à utiliser ces outils. Mais cela ne saurait suffire. Le citoyen doit également pouvoir poser un regard critique sur l'information, en comprendre les sources et en évaluer sa qualité et sa fiabilité. Cet ouvrage regroupe les contributions d'auteurs et d'éducateurs chevronnés. Il jette les bases d'une approche critique de l'éducation aux médias qui répond à des problèmes récurrents concernant notamment la vie privée, la liberté d'expression, la sexualité, la violence et les représentations médiatiques