Developing a Community-Based Definition of Needs for Persons Living with Chronic HIV

With the advent of antiretroviral therapy, HIV has become a chronic illness for those who have access to the medication. But unlike our understanding of acute disease experience which can be grasped within parameters defined by categories of medical diagnosis and treatment, understanding the experience of chronic illness requires that we expand our analytic frame to include variables and perspectives created by the beliefs, behaviors, context, and culture of the participants. Drawing on focus groups conducted among African American, Hispanic, and white people with HIV in Detroit, Michigan, we show that expressions of needs related to the lived experience of HIV vary among racial and ethnic groups and between genders, resulting in an experientially distinct set of needs.