Project Overview
StigmaScope is an interactive public health decision-support dashboard, designed in partnership with health departments and community partners, to help users understand the mechanisms and impact of stigma on key outcomes aligned with the Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) Initiative across the United States. The EHE Initiative is a federal program that aims to bolster HIV diagnosis, treatment, prevention and response in 57 varying geographic areas with elevated HIV transmission. The goal of StigmaScope is to support the incorporation of stigma into programmatic planning, intervention design, and policy-making decisions. To accomplish this goal, StigmaScope brings together data on individual and structural stigma, HIV outcomes, support services, and stigma reduction interventions. StigmaScope hosts a quantitative prediction model for these data so that users can actively explore how addressing stigma can support EHE efforts within their region of the U.S.
Stigma refers to negative beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, or policies directed toward people because of a real or perceived identity, behavior, or social characteristic. Stigma can take many forms; for example, HIV-related stigma affects individuals at risk of or living with HIV through the perception of negative attitudes, the anticipation of mistreatment and through social exclusion and acts of discrimination. Importantly, stigma related to HIV and other identities and behaviors often intersect and may be experienced in distinct ways by different groups of people.
To show how stigma can manifest and intersect across social settings and the HIV care continuum, StigmaScope highlights three ways stigma can be experienced: the perception and experience of stigma in different community settings (general social stigma – GSS), the perception and experience of stigma from family (family stigma), and the expectation of poor treatment in health care settings (anticipated health care stigma – AHS). Data for these forms of stigma come from individual surveys with people living with or at high risk of HIV.
Importantly, as stigma can be experienced or reinforced beyond the individual and community levels, StigmaScope also features policy indicators that capture stigma at the structural level (structural stigma).
StigmaScope is organized into two main sections: (1) state profiles, and (2) a national stigma heatmap.
State Profiles
Each profile is comprised of three tabs:
Stigma Impact Model Tab
Explores the relationships between stigma and service engagement across the HIV care continuum among men who have sex with men using a quantitative system dynamics model.
Support Services Tab
Shows the geographic distribution and density of supportive services for individuals at risk of HIV acquisition, including services related to housing, employment, substance use, mental health, and STI / HIV prevention.
Stigma Indicators Tab
Presents state-level individual measures of each type of stigma described above experienced by men who have sex with men alongside structural stigma indicators.
Note: A National Profile is available under the “Select a Profile” dropdown. Nationally aggregated data for support services and stigma indicators are available on the National Profile Support Services and Stigma Indicator Tabs.
National Stigma Heatmap
The National Stigma Heatmap displays state-level prevalence of three types of stigma:
General Social Stigma Scale: Experiences and perceptions of negative treatment, harassment, or physical / sexual violence perpetrated by police or community members in public spaces.
Stigma from Family Scale: Experiences and perceptions of exclusion, discrimination,
or rejection perpetrated by family members.
Anticipated Healthcare Stigma Scale: Fear of negative experiences or expectation of poor treatment while accessing or engaging with healthcare services that may lead to avoidance of care.