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

Abstract #111940

Barbara Dancy, PhD, RN, FAAN¹, Chrissie P. N. Kaponda, PhD RN², Sitingawawa Kachingwe, MSc², and Kathleen F. Norr, MA, PhD¹. (1) College of Nursing (M/C 802), University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 S. Damen, Chicago, IL 60612, 312 9967969, bdancy@uic.edu, (2) Kamuzu College of Nursing, University of Malawi, Private Bag # 1, Lilongwe, Malawi

Because HIV infection in Malawi continues to increase, it is imperative to develop HIV prevention programs for adolescents to promote HIV risk reduction skills. The purpose is to develop a HIV risk reduction intervention for Malawian rural adolescents by tailoring the Mother/Daughter HIV Risk Reduction Intervention (MDRR), an intervention that has established efficacy with low-income African American adolescent females. Generated from community input, MDRR is based on social cognitive theory. The tailoring was accomplished by using focus group data from rural Malawians: 199 adults and 196 adolescents. The tailoring resulted in the revision of MDRR to make it culturally relevant for rural Malawi. The revision included formal education about HIV course, transmission, and prevention through drama and song as well as group discussion similar to MDRR. Additionally, the data provided the contextual variables to develop culturally relevant vignettes to promote HIV risk reduction skills through role plays. The need to treat the genders differently resulted in boys and girls being taught the first two classes on sexual development separately. In the last four classes, both genders are taught together. While in MDRR, the mothers teach the content to their daughters in a group setting, in the Malawian Adolescent Intervention (MAI), a respected male and female community representative teach the adolescents in a group setting because it is culturally unacceptable for Malawian parents to discuss sexuality with their children. During town meetings, Malawian rural communities reviewed and accepted the MAI, an evidence-based intervention to be tested within the next 6 months.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to

• Describe the development of the Malawian Adolescent Intervention.
• Discuss the need to have culturally relevant interventions based on evidence-based data.

Keywords: Adolescents, International, HIV Interventions

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.

Recorded presentation