Older African-American adults aged 50 + living with HIV (OAAA-LWH) have unique social care needs, giving challenges related to their HIV status, poverty and poor mental health. This pilot survey with 35 OAAA-LWH (24 males and 11 females), who are patients of anuniversity medical center was to assess 1) relevance selected benchmark measures –self-efficacy, psychological distress, medication adherence, perceived discrimination, and received practical social care –, and 2) identify other potential factorsfor model testing in the subsequent phase of this study. The unique protocol, using audio, computer-assisted self-interviewing along with medical chart review, appeared to be viable and efficient, with less than 1% missing data. While participantshad a mean age of 54.3, theyhad managed HIV for over 18years. As expected, the majorityhad less than a college degree and reported being unemployed, with 88% on disability. Self-efficacy significantly correlated with psychological distress (r = -.64), poor medication adherence (r = -.37) and received practical social care (r = -.39). Pilot data suggest that assessing HIV-related stigma as a risk factor for perceived discrimination and depression would help further identify social care needs. And including their CD 4 counts in future analysisas a psychological distress bio-markerwould help identify how it may affect and be affected by the above-mentioned variables t in this population.

Biography:
Kuei-Hsiang Hsueh is a Associate Professor, College of Nursing, Univ. of Missour-St. Louis, USA. She has published many articles in different journals.