Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features 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 an 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: HIV Tests Become Part of Regular Check-ups, 11/20/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec06/hiv_11-20.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What kinds of shots and tests do you get when you go for your annual check-up?

2. What is AIDS?

3. Why isn't AIDS testing part of routine checkups?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What is the CDC and why has it recommended that everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 be tested for HIV?

Your next doctor appointment might include an HIV test due to new recommendations from the government agency for infectious diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC now recommends that health providers make voluntary HIV screening a routine part of medical care for all patients aged 13 to 64.

The aim is to increase early diagnosis of the virus among the approximately 250,000 HIV-positive Americans who are unaware that they are infected.

2. Why is early diagnosis of HIV important?

Early diagnosis is considered critical for people infected with HIV to live longer and to stop the spread of AIDS.

There is sometimes a long period of time between when a person contracts HIV and when his or her immune system is so damaged by the virus that the person has the disease AIDS, which makes them vulnerable to deadly infections.

Every year, new treatments, called anti-retroviral therapies, are being discovered that can extend the life of someone with HIV by decades.

However, nearly 40 percent of individuals diagnosed with HIV are diagnosed within one year of developing AIDS -- too late for them to fully benefit from treatment.

In addition, people who don't know they have HIV are much more likely to pass it on to others.

3. What were some barriers in the testing process?

Previous guidelines had suggested that only high-risk individuals should be tested for the virus. However it was often too hard to determine who was at high risk, and doctors at regular checkups didn't have time for a lengthy risk assessment test.

Procedures such as separate written consent and pre-test counseling have posed as barriers to the testing process, at times making it unfeasible to conduct the test in busy medical facilities.

4. What is the difference between a mandatory test and a routine test?

However, Dr. Gregg Pane who helped implement a routine testing program in Washington, D.C., noted that the new recommendations propose that the test is "routine" and not "compulsory".

"Patients will be given basic information and have the opportunity to ask questions before the test is carried out. It will only be suggested by medical practitioners at a routine medical checkup but there is an opt-out option."

5. How is the test conducted? How long does it take?

To make testing affordable and time effective, CDC has introduced "quick screening tests" which can be carried out in 20 minutes, and are 99.95 percent accurate.

Instead of drawing blood, nurses can just swab the inside of a patient's mouth.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Do you think routine testing will help stop the spread of HIV? Why or why not?

2. What do students need to know about HIV and AIDS? Who should be responsible for teaching them about it? Should it be taught in schools, at home or in both places?

3. Most of the time when HIV/AIDS is in the news, it focuses on the deadly effects of the disease in Africa. Research the rates of AIDS infection
for Botswana and South Africa. What are the effects of the disease on the country's society, health care system and economy? Now look at American cities such as New York City, San Francisco and Washington DC. How are the effects of AIDS different in these places?

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.