Friendship Based HIV/STI (Sexually Transmitted Infections) Intervention for African American Females

Overview

The Project ÒRÉ intervention is a half-day community-based HIV/STI intervention program for friendship groups of adolescents that is tailored to African American culture. The four participating community sites will be assigned to either the Project ÒRÉ intervention or a standard health promotion program. Sexually experienced African American adolescent females will recruit members of their friendship group for the five-hour program. All participants will complete questionnaires before and immediately following the programs and another one 3 months later. Immediately following the program some of the Project ÒRÉ groups will also participate in a focus group to provide feedback about the program.

A group-randomized controlled design to test the efficacy of the Project ÒRÉ intervention, a community-based adolescent social network HIV/STI intervention tailored to African American culture. Four community based organization sites (CBOs) will be randomly assigned to an experimental or attention control condition. In both conditions, sexually experienced African American adolescent females will recruit members of their friendship group for the five-hour program. In the experimental condition, the intervention group will receive the half-day Project ÒRÉ intervention. The attention control group will receive a standard health promotion control program which has been used previously with similar populations. All participants will complete pre-, post- and 3-month follow-up self-administered questionnaires. In the experimental condition, a subset of groups will participate in a process evaluation focus group immediately following the program.