Abstract:
living with HIV (ALWH). Teachers critically influence school environments, but are understudied in
terms of HIV stigma. We implemented a school-level, cluster-randomized trial to assess the impact
of a one-day multi-media training on the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs (K/A/B) of school
teachers in western Kenya. Teachers’ K/A/B were evaluated at baseline and six months. Additionally, we assessed stigma with ALWH enrolled in the included schools to explore the impact of the training. Teachers (N = 311) and ALWH (N = 19) were enrolled from 10 primary and 10 secondary schools. The intervention and control groups did not significantly differ in overall stigma score (mean 1.83 vs. 1.84; adjusted difference, 0.18 [95% CI, −0.082 to 0.045]) at six months; however, we found a trend towards improvement in overall stigma score and a significant difference in the community discrimination sub-scale among secondary school
teachers (mean 3.02 vs. 3.19; adjusted difference, −0.166 [95% CI, −0.310 to −0.022]). ALWH
reported few experiences of discrimination, but emphasized keeping their HIV status secret (84%). The teacher-training reduced secondary school teacher perceptions of community-level stigma but did not impact individual attitudes or beliefs.
