Northern Virginia AIDS Group Puts a Personal Face on Youth Ministry

On a recent Thursday, Shaun Hobdy stood before a class of 20 ninth graders at Edison High School in Alexandria. Despite an audience critical enough to make even the most experienced high school teacher sputter, Hobdy didn't blink an eye. Collected and relaxed, he reclined slightly against a desk talking to the students, as if he were describing his recent holiday vacation.

But he wasn’t sharing memories of times on a beach, nor is he even teaching them about a novel or a math equation. Instead, Hobdy was sharing what it is like living with AIDS, something he has had to experience for the past 20 years.

Hobdy is part of the Face-To-Face program, one of several programs run by the non-profit organization, Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry (NOVAM), which recently relocated to the City of Falls Church.

The group was founded in 1987 by religious leaders from several local churches seeking to respond to the deadly disease as it began to impact members of their congregations. Since then, the size of the organization has grown, now involving the work of 125 religious institutions, across a range of faiths and denominations, with a staff of 22 and an annual operating budget of $1.5 million.

Despite its growth, NOVAM remains focused on two goals: increasing awareness of the disease to assist in prevention and providing much needed assistance to those who have already been affected by it.

Nathan Monell, executive director of NOVAM, talked with the News-Press about the work his organization does in education, pointing out that the most important place to start is with young people. NOVAM’s target audience is with people between the ages of 12 and 25. At this time in their lives, people are at the greatest risk, Monell said. They face new responsibilities and opportunities without the wisdom and patience that comes with experience.

A study recently done by the National Institute of Mental Health has found evidence that the region of the brain that gauges the consequences of one’s actions fully mature until the age of 25, making teenagers more likely to take chances without thinking about what might happen, including the possibility of becoming infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

The awareness of AIDS in American society has changed significantly since it was first encountered in 1981. In the early years, little was known about the disease and it was thought to be restricted to certain groups and lifestyles, not a threat to everyone. But with the announcement by basketball superstar Magic Johnson that he was infected with HIV, the disease hit the mainstream and gained a center stage where it could be openly discussed.

Suddenly, supporting AIDS research became, as Monell called it, “Sexy.” Contributing to AIDS research to find a cure or a vaccine became a popular cause to champion. Fundraising walks and bike rides were held, concerts were arranged, and everyone awaited the cure that was supposed to be right around the corner. But when that cure failed to materialize, the support that had been rushing in started to dwindle. The public’s eye turned to other causes like cancer research, where more progress was being made and people had a greater chance of survival.

While the funding for finding a cure or vaccine remains, although at a reduced level, many of the secondary aspects to dealing with HIV and AIDS have been neglected, including the work of continuing education about the risks of the disease.

Monell said that a key part of getting students to take AIDS seriously is for educators to have frank conversations with students about sex. “Studies show that young people who know more about sex actually have less sex,” Monell said.

Monell expressed frustration at the focus by President Bush and the present administration to make sex education primarily about abstinence, rather than a comprehensive view of sex education that would also include information about contraception and preventing disease.

According to a December 2004 report prepared by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, the Bush administration has more than doubled funding for abstinence-only education programs since 2001.

The report also states that 80% of the curricula used by the majority of groups funded through abstinence-only education grants contain “false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.” These inaccuracies include exaggerated statistics about the ineffectiveness of condoms in preventing STDs and pregnancy, false information about the consequences of abortions, and even statements that sweat and tears are possible conveyors of HIV, a statement that is proven to be scientifically false.

NOVAM is not opposed to the teaching of abstinence as the primary form of preventing the spread of AIDS, and they subscribe to the ABCs of disease and pregnancy prevention which places abstinence as the primary prevention method (Abstinence, Be faithful, use a Condom.)

But Monell said that many teenagers are simply trying to understand the parameters by which they can live safely, and inaccurate and contradictory information can make them less sure about their decisions and more likely to make unsafe and poorly informed choices.

It is for this purpose that Shaun Hobdy spends his days talking to classes throughout the Northern Virginia area. Growing up in Hawaii, Hobdy was something of a bad boy. By the time he was in his teens he was sneaking out of his house late at night to go drinking with friends, climbing in through his window in the morning hours, without his mother knowing. By the age of 14 he had become sexually active.

Later, when he was 18 his mother moved the family out of Hawaii, but Hobdy insisted on staying, feeling like he was responsible enough to take care of himself. For a while life was good, until at the age of 21, when Hobdy had to go in for surgery to get a cyst removed from the base of his spine.

The procedure was supposed to be simple, but during the surgery he started to bleed more than the doctors expected and they decided to give him a transfusion to replace the lost blood.

A couple weeks after the surgery the hospital contacted Hobdy to tell him that they needed him to come in for testing, saying that there was a chance that he could have received contaminated blood. Sure enough, the tests came back positive for HIV.

Hobdy remembers being floored by the news. At the time AIDS research was still in its infancy and the news was full of people dying rapidly because of the disease. The doctors told Hobdy that he had two years to live.

“I kind of just walked around in a fog for a while,” he said.

But after a couple of years Hobdy hadn’t died. In fact he hadn't even felt sick. He started thinking about his life in the context of having a future, and with that thought came the gradual realization that his illness could be a part of his purpose in life. “I thought, ‘Maybe there’s a purpose to why I’m still here,’” said Hobdy.

Seeing his life open up, Hobdy moved to Los Angeles, where he started working in the baggage department at an airline. He had always wanted to work with an airline and he was willing to take any job to fulfill that dream. Then one morning he woke up and he couldn’t see anything.

After getting some blood tests he was told that his T-cell count, the cells essential to the functioning of the immune system, was below 70, indicating that HIV virus had developed into full-blown AIDS. The loss of his sight was due to an opportunistic infection which had caused his retinas to detach from the back of his eyes. His doctor gave him two choices, either prepare to die or start taking medication.

Hobdy began taking the medication, eventually taking around 27 pills a day, some to fight the virus, others to counteract the toxicity of the AIDS drugs. Even after 14 surgeries on his eyes, he remains legally blind to this day, with highly limited vision in only one eye. He describes it as “looking through a keyhole.”

Fighting his illness, Hobdy eventually made his way to Northern Virginia to be near his younger brother. Here he discovered NOVAM, who not only helped him with transportation services, but also gave him a way to follow through on what he saw as his new purpose in life; teaching young people about AIDS.

As part of the Face-To-Face program Hobdy talks with students at middle schools and high schools in Northern Virginia about how he contracted the virus and what it means living with the disease.

One of the main goals of the program is to overcome what is referred to as information fatigue. While many students get information about AIDS and what it can do to them, the information is often lost among the variety of other warnings that they get every day, from cautions about excessive sun exposure to the possible carcinogenic effects of aspartame.

Face-To-Face attempts to cut through the fatigue by placing students “face to face” with a person living with the disease, hoping to show how real the disease is.

A Face-To-Face session is broken down into two parts. It starts with an information lecture by a staff member from NOVAM. The staffer goes over the facts about the disease; how it is contracted, what kinds of activities put one at risk, and what the disease does to the body.

During the session at Edison High School it was apparent that this had all been said before. As the information was rolled out, the students started to get glazed looks in their eyes. In the back of the classroom somebody put their head down on the desk. In the corner two girls started talking quietly. At the end of the short lecture the NOVAM staff member asked if there were any questions. There aren’t.

Then she asked the guest speakers to get up and tell their stories. Hobdy and a woman named Diane walked to the head of the class. Diane started. She talked about how she contracted AIDS through sharing needles when she was addicted to heroin. She talked about her life on the streets, how she found out about being infected, and how she has since turned her life around, now working as a registered nurse.

Then Hobdy took his turn, sharing his story and talking without any hesitation about how the disease changed his life and what it has done to him physically.

From the first words out of Diane’s mouth to the last by Hobdy, the students were transfixed. There were no side conversations, no heads on desks. When the call for questions came, this time hands immediately shot up. One girl asked Diane about whether she stopped using drugs when she discovered her illness. Another asked what it was like when they both found out.

The answers were detailed and honest. There isn’t any shame, only a sincere hope that what they say will have an impact. Hobdy discovered that by being candid and honest with students he is able to overcome the initial resistance that teenagers have to being talked at. “They think like I did, that there’s a big “S” on their chest.” he said. “I just want them to see reality. Once you get AIDS, that’s it. You can’t give it back.”

After the students filed out of the room, Hobdy asked how the session went. Not being able to see well, he was excited to hear that the students were paying attention. For him, it is what he feels he can give; how he can turn his misfortune into a blessing. As he rested at the end of the class, two girls from the class walked back into the room and thanked him again for coming, saying they'd learned a lot.

For Nathan Monell, such connections among young people are vital to the mission of NOVAM. Because AIDS is an entirely preventable disease, the secret to ending it could just as easily lie in behavioral modification as it could in a vaccination. The secret is just in how to get through to everybody.

Along with Face-To-Face, NOVAM runs peer education workshops, where young people are taught how to effectively share information about AIDS and AIDS prevention with friends and peers, and then organize times for them to meet with other youth.

NOVAM also has a program that sends an RV with staff and volunteers into low income, and high minority areas, places that historically have inconsistent access to recent and accurate health information, and thus tend to have higher rates of infection.

Additionally, the organization has services to help those already affected with AIDS, providing transportation for medical appointments and assisting in a variety of ways in the face of emergencies.

The group also runs a program to help children in families affected by HIV lead as normal a life as possible through providing care services, field trips, and even beds and clothes in the case where the illness of a family member has compounded the problems faced as a result of poverty.

Last year, NOVAM provided services to 187 children in the Northern Virginia area, gave 13,161 rides, helped facilitate over $25,000 in adopt-a-family donations, and arranged 7,166 hours of volunteer services from over 100 volunteers.

Monell pointed out that it is easier to show the impact from the specific services they provide than it is to show the effectiveness of their education program. It’s hard to show how well one has stopped someone from not doing something.

Still, over the past decade, he has been encouraged by the statistics showing the number of new infections decreasing, although between 2000 and 2003 there has been a slight up-tick in diagnoses, and the number people living with AIDS has continued to rise as life expectancies of those infected increase through improved medications.