Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: At-Home AIDS Test Raises Health Issues, 11/30/2005
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/aidstest_11-30.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is the difference between HIV & AIDS?

2. How do people get HIV or AIDS?

3. What is an HIV test? How do you get one?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. How many people in the United States are infected with HIV but do not know it? Why is that a problem?

...nearly a quarter of the million HIV affected people in the United States unaware that they have been exposed to HIV virus,

… 50% of the 40,000 new HIV cases each year are transmitted by people who have been recently infected and are unaware they are infected.

2. What is the OraQuick rapid HIV-1 test?

To take the OraQuick test, an individual swabs his gums and then place the saliva coated strip in a holder. Twenty minutes later the strip will show either one line for negative or two lines for positive.

3. Why are some health care officials reluctant to make the rapid test available for at-home use?

A positive home test result could spark panic or even suicide, says Dr. Philippe Chiliade, who serves as the Medical Director at The Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, DC.

"One of the big threats of this test is that people will not have the support that they need if the test is positive."

It usually takes between two to twelve weeks after exposure for an infected individual to test positive. Without understanding this critical information, a teenager who may have been exposed to the virus could take an at-home HIV test, test negative, and continue to engage in risky behavior.

4. Why do some health care officials feel making the test available for use at home would be better for at-risk teens?

"The major benefit for this test would be if it would prompt a teenager into care. There might be a kid who wants to find out results in private and then armed with the results will go see a doctor," says Susan Rosenthal, Director of Adolescent and Behavioral Health at the University of Texas

Dr. Rosenthal also believes that an over-the-counter HIV test could lead to a much needed dialogue about sex "To the extent that this test could serve as a jumping off point for conversation among teens with their parents and doctors then it might be a good option."

5. How soon after a person is initially infected can the rapid test detect HIV?

"It usually takes between two to twelve weeks after exposure for an infected individual to test positive.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Do you think young people in the United States know enough about AIDS? Is AIDS a big deal? Why or why not.

2. Home pregnancy tests have been available over the counter for years. Write an essay comparing the drawbacks and benefits of the availability of home pregnancy test to rapid HIV-1 test?

3. Some health officials claim that at-home HIV testing should not be available whereas others claim it should. Write an essay detailing the arguments and explain which position you would support and why.

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.