Sports and HIV/AIDS Prevention

According to UNAIDS there are an estimated thirty-three million people living with HIV/AIDS. Since the mid-1980s governments, agencies, and non-governmental organizations have slowly mobilized to provide HIV/AIDS prevention education. However, it soon became evident that prevention programs were not resulting in behavioral changes as expected. Practitioners and academics quickly learned that this complex disease required a creative prevention education response. In response, the United Nations identified the need to harness the humanitarian potential of sport to achieve objectives relating to HIV and AIDS education and prevention. As a result, a number of programs were created that utilize the power of sport to educate youth on how to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS. This study will identify HIV/AIDS prevention education programs utilizing sport as a delivery method and evaluate whether these programs are relevant, respectful and effective.