Health care participation of perinatal women with HIV: What helps and what gets in the way?

Dealing with the reality of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a life-changing challenge to perinatal women as they try to care for themselves and their children in environments that often include stigma, uncertainty, and limited access to information and health care. Our purpose for this interpretive hermeneutic study was to identify factors that women with HIV saw as helping or impeding their participation in their health care. We analyzed the qualitative data from open-ended interviews conducted with 18 women. We identified the facilitating themes of "Staying Healthy for Kids," "God Has His Reasons," and "My Family's There for Me." Barriers were "It Hurts to Know," "Health Care System Struggles," and "Kids and Buses and Taxies." We found that the women identified "Health Care Providers' Behaviors" as both an enhancing and an impeding factor to their health care participation. These findings can guide providers to offer more "user-friendly" support systems for women with HIV and their children.