Course Details

As part of course requirements, students will present a current event based on each day’s readings or lectures, to be turned in twice weekly by midnight the day before each class period. Link to current event story can be emailed to professors, or turned in as a hard or scanned copy each class period.

Students will be required to write a 15 page research paper. Students will choose a developing country and describe an in-country plan to hit the US Obama Administration goal of ZERO HIV infections (an AIDS-free generation) in their chosen country. Students will describe the in-country AIDS epidemic in terms of its epidemiology (disease transmission and spread), including risk behaviors, and access to treatment. Students will then describe how to reach a goal of zero transmissions within the country by the end of this decade (2019). Students will make evidence-based recommendations targeting the AIDS epidemic for their chosen country and describe whether or how these recommendations will serve to achieve zero HIV transmissions. Papers will be due last week of class (week of June 7, 2013).

At the end of this course, students will be able to:
– Summarize the history of the AIDS epidemic
– Explain how the human-immunodeficiency virus enters the body and attacks the immune system
– Describe clinical symptoms and manifestations of HIV and AIDS, outline disease stages and describe disease progression, including acquisition of opportunistic illnesses
– Compare the treatment policies and options for HIV and AIDS disease between developed and developing countries
– Summarize issues related to effective treatment of HIV in both developed and developing countries
– Describe the factors associated with differing nations’ patterns of HIV spread
– Discuss transmission patterns in relation to risk behaviors, describing sexual, drug and maternal-child transmission of HIV
– Recognize the differing patterns in the national and international spread of HIV and AIDS and explain how risk behaviors and risk factors vary around the world
– Distinguish the differential risk patterns of the spread of HIV in different countries around the world, and describe how these patterns create different AIDS epidemics
– Identify how biological and behavioral co-factors, including other sexually transmitted diseases, play a role in the world-wide spread of HIV
– Discuss effective medical/clinical, vaccine and behavioral HIV prevention strategies
– Summarize the psycho-social, medical, and economic impact of HIV or AIDS on individuals, families, communities and nations
– Delineate how a chosen country can hit the WHO UNAIDS goal of an “AIDS-free generation”
– Respond to individuals with HIV who present in class as a panel