Center helps rural communities in fight against AIDS

Much of the attention on AIDS and HIV has been focused on urban areas and inner cities in the past few years, while small towns and rural areas receive little attention on sexually transmitted disease prevention, or often deny that a problem with AIDS exists in their community.\nThe Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention (RCAP), an organization based at IU, confronts this problem by helping these communities learn more about prevention, said Professor William Yarber, senior director of the center.\nThe organization was started in 1994 to develop and evaluate educational materials and approaches to AIDS prevention, to examine the behavioral and social barriers to prevention and to provide prevention resources to rural areas and those who need it, according to the mission statement in the center's 1999 annual report.\nYarber, the founder of the organization, has been involved with AIDS and STD prevention throughout his career and wrote the country's first AIDS educational curriculum in the United States, he said.\nHe said he got the idea to seek funding to start a rural center for prevention after realizing few opportunities and resources are available to rural areas to educate on prevention, he said.\n"We're the only center in the country that deals with rural communities," Yarber said.\nThe number of AIDS cases has decreased in urban areas, going down from 85 percent in 1994 to 82 percent in 1999, according to statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the number of cases in rural areas has increased nationwide from 6 percent in 1994 to 7 percent in 1999.\nOf the top 25 counties with reported cases of AIDS in the United States, Yarber said, most were rural counties. But, he said, individuals in these areas often deny that the numbers are increasing.\n"Much of the attention given to AIDS-related research has focused on urban areas," said Associate Professor Stephanie Sanders. "Yet persons living in the less populated areas of our country are susceptible to infection."\nThe center's goal is to educate members of these communities about the rising number of AIDS cases in rural areas and to broaden their resources for prevention, letting them know that AIDS is not only an epidemic in urban areas, Yarber said.\nThree professors from IU, two from Purdue University, one Texas A&M professor, graduate students and research fellows from the Kinsey Institute make up the Rural Center for AIDS Prevention, he said.\nRCAP originally was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but now is funded by the CDC, Yarber said.\nRCAP recently received a federal grant of $250,000 for the first year of a five-year projected, according to an IU press release. Sen. Evan Bayh has been active in making federal funds a possibility for the organization, Yarber said.\n"Dr. Yarber's important work will help to control this devastating disease in communities that have been largely under-served by other AIDS prevention programs," said IU President Myles Brand in a press release. "Sen. Bayh has worked diligently to help secure this funding for Indiana University, and we are extremely grateful for his support."\nYarber said previously the organization was funded yearly, but now with a five-year funding plan, the group has more of a chance to broaden their resources and to enhance their projects.\nThe center produces fact sheets, bulletins and monographs on AIDS preventions for rural communities, as well as provides conferences on prevention. One project of the organization is to plan such a conference on prevention.\n"What we're doing now is planning a national conference in April," Yarber said. "It would be the second conference on AIDS prevention in rural communities."\nThe term "rural" applies to counties of 50,000 residents or less, based on the U.S. Census definition of rural, Yarber said, and these areas are the focus of the organization.\nAnother project RCAP members are working on involves creating educational materials to teach proper condom use and collecting data from several populations in rural communities, said Sanders.\nBy providing studies and programs such as these, the members of RCAP said they hope to raise awareness in rural communities that AIDS can be contracted anywhere at anytime without knowing the proper ways of prevention.\n"Risky behavior, no matter where you live, can result in infection," Yarber said.