A new club on ASU’s Tempe campus is being created to help bring awareness to HIV, a virus that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls an epidemic.
“When I told people I was starting an HIV awareness club they kind of giggled … I don’t know why cancer doesn’t get those giggles, but HIV does,” said biology sophomore and club co-founder Marissa Swanson.
HIV is the actual virus that can lead to AIDS, which is a “late stage of HIV infection,” according to the CDC’s website.
Swanson and two ASU seniors created the club after participating in AIDS Walk Phoenix on Oct. 3.
The club’s first meeting was Oct. 13 in Juniper Hall, a building at Barrett, the Honors College on the Tempe campus. Six or seven students attended, most of them from Barrett.
However, this club is available for all ASU students, not just honors students.
“I know there are more people interested in getting involved,” said Courtney Baxter, an animal physiology and behavior sophomore.
The club is still in the early stages of being created. The next order of business, Swanson said, is to elect officers and draft a constitution. This will happen at the club’s next meeting on Thursday, a necessity to get the club approved by ASU.
The club will likely meet bi-monthly, and Swanson said its biggest focus will be on educating the ASU students about HIV and AIDS and about how to prevent infection.
There are various stigmas and stereotypes surrounding HIV and AIDS that the club will try to shed light on.
“We want to educate people … [HIV and AIDS are] kind of a big deal,” microbiology freshman Indira Harahap said. “I think everyone should be involved with [educating others].”
One of the common stereotypes surrounding HIV is that it is a disease contracted by only homosexual males.
According to a 2008 CDC report, 63.1 percent of the approximately 11,700 Arizonans who have been diagnosed with AIDS are males who have sexual relations with other males. Another 11.9 percent were males who had sex with other males, but also used injection drugs — another possible means of transmission.
According to the same CDC report, 8.4 percent of Arizonans with AIDS engage in heterosexual sex.
“There’s a big stigma surrounding HIV … there’s this idea that it’s only a gay-related disease, and it’s not,” Swanson said.
In July, the CDC estimated there are more than 1 million people living with HIV in the U.S., and more than 20 percent of those people are unaware they have the disease.
Every year, 56,300 Americans are infected with HIV, according to a 2006 CDC report, and the disease has killed more than 550,000 Americans to date.
According to Baxter, there is a similar HIV and AIDS awareness club already in place at the Downtown campus. As the Tempe club grows, they will try to build off what the Downtown club has done.
Reach the reporter at connor.radnovich@asu.edu
