Health and Human Development

Penn State offers online HIV/AIDS education programs

After 30 years since its discovery, more than 1 million U.S. adults and adolescents are living with HIV. Annually, about 50,000 more Americans become infected. Yet there is a sense of complacency and continuing stigma surrounding this epidemic. Along with new developments, including the first approved drug to prevent HIV infection and first in-home HIV test, education plays a critical role in combating the spread of HIV, especially among the young. To help the education effort, Penn State is offering a new series of online HIV/AIDS prevention and education programs.

"We want to make the most current information about HIV/AIDS as accessible and convenient as possible for the professionals who provide sexual and health-promoting information to young people and others," said Patricia Barthalow Koch, professor of biobehavioral health in Penn State's College of Health and Human Development. Koch also is faculty director of the Pennsylvania Learning Academy for Sexuality Education (PLASE), which offers these programs.

The online programs include: The Changing Face of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic; HIV/AIDS: From Infection to Disease; HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention; and a compilation program of all three titled HIV/AIDS in the 21st Century. They are designed for teachers, counselors, therapists, psychologists, coaches, school nurses and other health care professionals, as well as community professionals and are open to people in Pennsylvania and beyond. The PLASE programs have been developed with funding support from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

For information about the online HIV/AIDS prevention programs and to register, visit http://www.outreach.psu.edu/programs/plase/index.html online.

Penn State Continuing Education offers a venue for adults to return to the classroom on their own terms. Continuing Education is part of Penn State Outreach, which serves more than 5 million people each year, in all 67 Pennsylvania counties, all 50 states and more than 100 countries worldwide.
 

Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated August 7, 2012

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