The UN recently identified India as having the largest number of HIV/AIDS sufferers in the world. HIV/AIDS is a grave problem for the world, with nine out of 10 infected individuals being unaware of their serostatus. India’s 5.7 million cases present many unique challenges. Unlike in the United States, sexual practices cannot be openly discussed in India due to the social stigma attached to such topics, and even the provision of basic sex education is being reduced over time. For the past two years I have conducted research at Stanford University, working on new ways to address some of these challenges to help provide education for HIV/AIDS prevention.

Although I am a born and raised Coloradan, I have always been interested in India. My family originates from West Bengal, India, and I have visited India numerous times throughout my life. I have been fortunate to have had many opportunities which are not available to the average resident of India. I attended the public school system in the Denver metro area, completed my undergraduate education at CU, and am now doing graduate work at Stanford. During my academic career I have always been intrigued and, to be frank, shocked by the disparity in circumstance between myself and the hundreds of people I saw on my visits to India. My study of economics raised questions about the systemic economic and social differences between life in the United States versus life in India, and the impact this difference has on the average person in India.

So why is it so hard to provide effective HIV/ AIDS education in India? As a culturally diverse yet socially conservative country, India faces the challenge of educating its populace about HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment methods while avoiding the subject of sex—a topic considered taboo in open discussions. As such, academic institutions do not provide students with practical education about prevention.

In fact, sex education has recently been abolished in six of the 28 Indian states (Zaheer, 2007).1 The chief minister of Karnataka, one of the highest-risk states, says, “Sex education may be necessary in Western countries, but not in India, which has rich culture. It will have adverse effect on young minds, if implemented” (Gentleman, 2007).2 Still further, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, says that sex education has “no place in Indian culture.” Instead of sex education, Chouhan plans to introduce a curriculum on yoga (!) for youth (Sify, 2007).3 Indian youth are often fearful or embarrassed to ask their parents, teachers, or even doctorsthe lack of privacy in Indian culture makes it difficult to research these topics individually.

Thus, although the World Bank says that HIV/ AIDS education represents “a window of hope” in curbing the spread of the disease, the best way to provide that education remains unclear. Since sexual health education is not easily delivered through the traditional educational system, HIV/AIDS campaigns have primarily been launched through the mass media (messages on billboards, television spots, radio ads, etc.) in order to reach large populations. While this method is effective in simultaneously reaching a large number of people to raise awareness, there are many reasons why its exclusive use is incapable of stemming the tide of the epidemic. First, since advertising is expensive, the educational messages are dispersed as terse segments (e.g., television spots are approximately 30 seconds, billboards usually carry one or two messages), making it difficult for learners to build a more concrete conceptual framework since they must piece together the messages in a coherent form. Second, depending on the type of media, only specific groups are exposed to the educational messages. For example, television ads are only delivered to homes with television sets and electricity, which tend to be the higher socioeconomic classes. Billboards’ HIV/AIDS messages are usually expressed in written text, which can only be read by literate people. According to 2001 India census data, India’s national literacy rate is only 65.2 percent. Finally, media campaigns only allow for oneway communication. Although interventions delivered through mass media are not entirely effective, they are clearly better than providing no information at all.

It was after learning about such difficulties in delivering prevention education that I brought together a team of experts spanning the fields of medicine, biology, human computer interface, communication, and education, from both Stanford and CU, to brainstorm possible ways to address this problem. Through Stanford’s School of Education, we ran an Institutional Review Board-approved (Human Subjects Research Review) study on 200 young adults in India to better assess the current attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs of individuals and to test various images which conveyed prevention messages while maximizing comfort and efficacy.

We realized that in order to get HIV/AIDS education into academic institutions, we would have to develop learning materials in a culturally and socially sensitive way. It was through a series of testing images and words on Indian students and 150 iterations that a final storyboard was designed. We developed a way of teaching HIV/AIDS education without directly talking about sex. Using learning goals, based on pedagogically sound education methods, the Interactive Teaching AIDS application was developed. The application targets vulnerable young adults to promote HIV/AIDS awareness despite cultural and social barriers abundant in many developing countries. To minimize the stigma associated with discussing sexual practices, the biological aspect of HIV/AIDS is emphasized, utilizing animated agents and avatars to maximize comfort and efficacy. Our plans are to deliver content via the Internet, mobile devices (for privacy), and comic books (in low-tech areas).

Two versions of this application are currently in production: (1) a general Asian version sponsored by the Medical Research Information Center, with funding from the South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology, and (2) an Indian research version funded by Vinod and Neeru Khosla and the Lena Kay Rufus Memorial Scholarship Fund of the Lutheran Community Foundation. Our team has been in contact with experts at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, negotiating the development of a similar version for a Chinese audience. We plan to test learning and distribute the Asian version in South Korea, and then expand to additional geographies through talks with various education ministries and agencies and AIDS-related NGOs. We hope these efforts will help produce a much more prevalent and culturally sensitive set of curricula throughout India and Asia, and help prevent the spread of HIV.

As I work on these projects, I am constantly reminded of my time at CU. I am indebted to the economics department, and particularly my advisors, Michael Greenwood and Ann Carlos, as well as Nicholas Flores, for providing me immeasurable guidance and inspiration since my days at CU. It was in the economics department that I studied one of India’s problems formally for the first time, writing my undergraduate thesis on the flow of certain types of capital from the United States to India. I learned how to conduct primary research (which at the time was uncommon for undergraduates to do), structure problems, apply formal analysis, and finally write a coherent academic paper. Those skills helped prepare me for economic consulting at Analysis Group after graduation, and I continue to rely on them in my research at Stanford. The Department of Economics will always be my home and the place where I learned about the importance of pedagogically-sound, researchbased education and my responsibility to social justice. I hope to follow in the footsteps of the great teachers I had there and help educate others.

Piya Sorcar (’01) is executive director of XRI Inc., a California-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that specializes in rich media Internet-based medical and literacy related education. She is also the head of Interactive Teaching AIDS, an animation-based curriculum developed to teach HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention strategies. She earned her MA in Education and is currently pursuing a PhD in learning sciences and technology design/international comparative education at Stanford University. She was the first person to graduate from CU-Boulder with three simultaneous bachelor’s degrees – a BS in journalism and mass communication, a BS in business administration, and a BA in economics (summa cum laude).

1 Zaheer, Kamil (2007). “‘Get real’ and save Indian youth from AIDS – official.” Reuters, India. Online resource: uk.reuters.com/article/ healthNews/ idUKDEL6968520070517?feedType=RSS

2 Gentleman, Amelia (2007). “Sex education curriculum angers Indian conservatives.” International Herald Tribune ASIA-Pacific. Online resource: www.iht.com/ articles/2007/05/24/africa/letter.php

3 Sify News “No sex education in Madhya Pradesh schools.” March 20, 2007. Online resource:
sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14412544