Introduction

This chapter demonstrates the need for social workers to gain understanding of the social character of health in all its dimensions – physical, mental, emotional and social. It illustrates why social workers must understand social work in its historical and political context. And it shows how educators of student social workers must prepare graduates to work with the pressing health inequalities and priorities of the day.

One of these priorities is HIV/AIDS, identified in Section 14.1 as an epidemic in India, where effective prevention and management of a ‘looming catastrophe’ is threatened by ignorance, stigma and the difficulty of reaching people with information. The argument that social work can provide educational leadership by marrying strong vision with community and professional education which exploits new communication technologies, is forcefully put and backed up with evidence.

A no less significant priority is to prepare students to work with communities that carry unequal burdens of illness and suffering, made more complex when social work carries a legacy of being implicated in creating and sustaining this burden. Section 14.2 is an account of the early stages of a research project in Australian social work education, aimed at exploring social work practices with indigenous communities and, in turn, changing social work education. Achieving partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous collaborators is an essential step towards preparing social work students more effectively to tackle the gross health inequalities which exist.

At the University of Pretoria, South Africa, the priorities of the health social work curriculum match those officially identified for attention in national health care policy. These include people with HIV/AIDS, women, children, and old and disabled people. Section 14.3 describes the political and social context of health and health services – the health consequences of poverty and violence, the paucity of services and the overwhelming workloads carried by professionals – which frames the curriculum design process. It is argued that the extensive knowledge, diverse skills and fortitude that graduates require to practise in situations of profound social and health inequalities, demand specialist qualifications.

HIV/AIDS education and awareness campaign: reaching the unreached through distance learning

Introduction

When HIV was first detected in India in 1986, there were only 10 cases in the country (Veeraraghavan and Singh, 1999).