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[ Recorded presentation ] Recorded presentation

"What's the 411: Assessing the Feasibility of Providing High Risk Adolescents with HIV and Sexuality Education through Faith-Based Organizations."

Shelley A. G. Francis, MPH, CHES, School of Public Health, Dept. of Maternal & Child Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 401 Rosenau Hall, 4th Floor, Campus Box 7400, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7400, 919-824-3781, sfrancis@rti.org and Wendy K.K. Lam, PhD, Substance Abuse Treatment Evaluations and Interventions, Research Triangle Institute, PO Box 12194, 3040 Cornwallis Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194.

African American adolescents are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS. Religiosity literature finds that African American youth are more religious and are more likely to participate in youth activities and clubs connected to faith-based organizations than other youth. The Black church is considered a prime venue for addressing both spiritual and non-spiritual needs, including health education programs for the community. However, issues surrounding sexuality and HIV prevention create ethical and moral clashes between what public health defines as important program components and what faith-based groups are willing to implement.

The CDC-funded Partnership for Adolescent Wellness Study (PAWS) seeks to identify individual, family, peer, school, and neighborhood structures that influence HIV-related behaviors among the adolescent children of African American women who use crack cocaine to design a community-level HIV prevention intervention. As part of this study, we will survey approximately 40 faith-based leaders using snowball sampling.

Surveys will address priority adolescent health issues, health topics that respondents would and would not discuss with adolescents, respondents’ prevalence estimates of youth risk behaviors such as alcohol and drug use and sexual intercourse, and willingness to be a part of HIV prevention activities such as providing HIV education and condoms. Qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to elucidate faith based leaders attitudes and beliefs using frequencies, mean scores, rankings, chi-square tests, and thematic trends.

Understanding the perspectives of faith-based leaders of African-American communities will help determine the feasibility of mobilizing this venue in HIV prevention programs.

Learning Objectives: Learning objectives