Micaurys Guzmán, M.S.W.’24, gave a presentation on providing care for Latinx people living with HIV at a summit at the White House in September. Courtesy photo.
It was September and social worker Micaurys Guzmán was describing how her team at a behavioral health center in Boston supports Latinx patients who are either living with HIV or at high risk for contracting the deadly virus.
Guzmán, director of recovery support services for Casa Esperanza, was at the White House, and her audience included the director of the Office of National AIDS Policy.
She was nervous, she recalls, but focused, explaining how her organization relies on a team of bilingual and bicultural clinicians, caseworkers, and medical experts to help Latinx people identify risks, manage their health, and explore treatment options for the disease.
Her presentation was part of a daylong summit aimed at accelerating the nation’s response to HIV in the Hispanic and Latinx communities, a scourge that has become more and more of a health crisis over the past several years.
While the total number of new HIV infections in the United States decreased by 12 percent from 2018 to 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it increased by 17 percent among Hispanic and Latinx people during the same time period. And although Hispanic and Latinx people make up 19 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for 32 percent of all new HIV diagnoses in 2022.
“There is an urgent need to strengthen efforts to address the HIV epidemic in Latinx communities,” says Guzmán, who graduated from the Advanced Standing M.S.W. program at the Boston College School of Social work in May. “When someone is living with HIV, it’s affecting their whole family and impacting quality of life not only for the individual who is sick, but also their loved ones as well.”
Guzmán attributes the disproportionate prevalence of HIV in the Latinx community to two primary factors: a lack of awareness of HIV prevention and stigma, a social phenomenon that, she says, prevents many Latinx people from getting tested and treated for disease. She favors targeted efforts to increase community awareness and knowledge of HIV, which is one of the reasons that she and her colleagues at Casa Esperanza offer peer education services as well as interventions to reduce stigma and discrimination.
Another way to reduce HIV-related stigma in the Latinx community, according to Guzmán, is to increase the number of practicing Latinx social workers through training programs such as BCSSW’s Latinx Leadership Initiative, which prepares students to help clients in the nation’s second largest ethnoracial group access culturally and linguistically appropriate education, social services, and healthcare.
Research shows that Latinx clients are more likely to get tested for HIV when they have social workers who share their cultural background, language, and appearance.
“There are a lot of myths and stigma still surrounding HIV and, as providers, we have to find ways to work around that,” says Guzmán, who has worked at Casa Esperanza for nearly 10 years. “That’s why I think having more Latino social workers is so important—so that we can guide and support people in order for them to feel like they have a good understanding of what’s going on.”
At the summit, Micaurys Guzmán, second from the right, addressed the director of the Office of National AIDS Policy. Courtesy photo.
Guzmán models her empathetic approach to clients at Casa Esperanza after her own experience in the LLI, where she received continuous support from faculty and staff.
When Guzmán was struggling to balance her coursework with her job at the behavioral health center, she sought guidance from LLI Assistant Director Ximena Soto. She remembers visiting her office in tears—and on the verge of dropping out of the program.
“Ximena is like, ‘No, what can we do?’” Guzmán recalls. ‘“How can we make this work? What support do you need for your assignments? What are the things that you need in terms of your internship? What are the accommodations?’”
Guzmán stuck with the program. She even earned a certificate in trauma, which has come in handy as she works with a small caseload of clients at Casa Esperanza in addition to her other responsibilities.
As an alumnus, Guzmán says that the LLI paid for her to take a six-month course in preparation for the Licensed Clinical Social Worker exam, which she passed in October. “It feels like a family,” she says of the award-winning program, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in March with a daylong symposium.
Now, Guzmán applies the LLI’s ethos of generosity, teamwork, and perseverance to help clients at Casa Esperanza get their lives back on track. She says that she and her colleagues regularly team up to help people living with HIV find affordable housing, get jobs, and sort out their immigration status.
“We really try to support them in being able to communicate and advocate for themselves,” says Guzmán, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic to the United States in 2005 at the age of 18.
At the White House summit, her overview of Casa Esperanza’s support services for Latinx people living with HIV, which includes everything from personalized care plans to transportation to and from medical appointments, was well-received by other participants. Healthcare professionals, social service providers, and individuals with lived experience in attendance were all surprised to learn that a small, community-based organization that employs only 180 people is able to provide such comprehensive support to so many in need.
“Clients coming to us are seen not as fragments of the different problems that they might be facing, but as whole, complex people,” says Guzmán. “Other experts at the summit were surprised that we are doing so much in the community despite being so little.”
