Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #102363

Barbara L. Dancy, PMA, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 South Damen, Office 1060, M/C 802, Chicago, IL 60612, 312-996-9168, Bdancy@uic.edu and Kathleen S. Crittenden, PhD, Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago, MC 312, 1007 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 60607.

Low-income African American adolescent females are at disproportionately high risk for contracting HIV. Because few HIV risk reduction interventions involve mothers, the Mother/Daughter HIV Risk Reduction intervention (MDRR), an innovative community-based intervention, was developed to provide mothers with HIV risk reduction content so they could serve as their daughters' primary HIV educators. Based on social cognitive learning theory, MDRR is a six-session culturally-, gender- and age-specific skill-building intervention delivered in a group format. A split-plot repeated measures design, with hierarchical linear modeling to adjust for clustering within groups, was used to test the effectiveness of MDRR over a 6 month period. MDRR was compared to two control interventions: Health Expert intervention where health professions provided daughters with HIV risk reduction content and Health Promotion intervention where mothers taught content on nutrition and diet. The dependent variable was daughter's sexual activity; mediating variables were daughters' HIV transmission knowledge, self-efficacy to refuse sex, and intention to refuse sex. We hypothesized that compared to adolescents in the control interventions, daughters in MDRR would have higher scores on mediating variables and report less sexual intercourse. The sample was 262 daughters, age 11-14, of low-income, predominantly single mothers. The results revealed that mothers in MDRR were equally effective as health experts in increasing mediating variables and reducing daughters' sexual activity and that Health Promotion daughters compared to MDRR daughters had lower scores on mediating variables and were 4.8 times as likely to report sexual activity. Active involvement of mothers into HIV intervention programs is cost-effective.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key components of an effective Mother/daughter HIV risk reduction program for African American adolescent duaghters.
• Articulate the benefits of including mothers as viable HIV educators into HIV risk reduction programs for their adolescent daughters

Keywords: African American, Adolescents

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.