Influence of Religiosity on HIV/AIDS-Related Behaviors of Adolescents

The 6th of the 8 United Nations Millennium Development Goals is  to  combat  HIV/AIDS,  which  affects  the  fulfillment  of  4  other  goals. Combating HIV/AIDS depends on effective sex education and the care of AIDS patients across countries, cultures, and all kinds of boundaries. Is religion  a  protective  factor  against  HIV/AIDS,  or  is  it  a  barrier? Literature  is  divided  on  this  issue.  The  purpose  of this study  was  to determine  the  influence  of  religiosity  on  attitudes and  protective practices against the risk of HIV/AIDS in 849 Peruvian students from 52 private schools in the 3 cities: Lima, Cuzco and Iquitos. Results showed that the level of religiosity and attitudes are notsignificantly related, but religion did encourage protective practices againstthe risk of HIV/AIDS (r  =  .059,  p  >  .05,  r  =  -.156  p  <  0.01).  This  establishes  a  low relationship between religiosity and protective practices against the risk of  HIV/AIDS.  Attitudes  were  also  found  to  have  a  highly  significant correlation  (p  <  .01)  with  protective  practices  against  the  risk  of HIV/AIDS.