Recruitment Challenges in Conducting HIV/STI Risk Reduction Programs with Black Adolescents in Mental Health Treatment

Issues:

Adolescents with mental illnesses are a historically underserved group with respect to HIV prevention resources. Successful HIV prevention interventions have focused on cognitive and behavioral determinants of sexual risk, but may not adequately address the needs of youth in mental health treatment. In addition to the dire need for comprehensive sexual health programming in mental healthcare, challenges exist in engaging youth from community-based mental health treatment settings.

Description:

Project GOLD: “We are Kings and Queens” is an HIV/STI prevention program developed for Black adolescents with mental illnesses in an urban setting (N = 210). A vital component of the program includes finding innovative ways to identify and retain a somewhat transient population. A number of recruitment challenges have surfaced while implementing the Project GOLD protocol. Throughout the enrollment process, eligible participants have been difficult to engage and retain due to everyday life challenges (i.e. access to transportation, work, change in residence, and competing priorities) and the extensive lag period between recruitment and obtaining enough participants to run the eight member session.

Lessons Learned:

Challenges included difficulties in identifying a large pool of clients within the study’s demographics, low agency census for the target population, parent/guardian participation refusal, and unstable contact information for follow-up.

Recommendations:

Finding innovative strategies to engage the target population, and building rapport with youth, as well as mental health providers and agency staff, is essential to this type of research. While group-level approaches can be efficacious, individually-tailored, technologically-based interventions may also be well suited.