Overcoming Challenges for the Delivery of HIV, STI, and Pregnancy Prevention Programs in Early Adolescents

Issues: Effective HIV, STI, and pregnancy prevention programming is urgently needed for middle school youth; however program delivery to this population can represent a considerable challenge. Description: These challenges are categorized and a “blue print” provided to mitigate their influence in the delivery of HIV, STI, and pregnancy prevention to middle schools. Empirical evidence from the successful implementation of an effective comprehensive curriculum for middle school, “It's Your Game…Keep it Real,” will provide the foundation for describing protocols to overcome challenges, including negotiating sensitive topic areas within the context of the middle school classroom, ensuring appropropiate screening and training of classroom facilitators, and enabling a unified team approach from school personnel to support program delivery. Lessons Learned: Empirically tested recruitment, training, and implementation protocols will be described. Screening processes critical for the recruitment of effective facilitators included experience in and sensitivity regarding the content area, and experience with middle school instruction. A detailed training plan included sensitivity training, values clarification, skills-training, and classroom management to ensure facilitators operated in the classroom setting with optimal fidelity to the curriculum and sensitivity to the middle school population. Top-down recruitment procedures were successfully employed in the school district followed by an implementation strategy to develop an effective project-school team liaison to achieve mutual logistic and process goals. Recommendations: Well delineated and executed recruitment, training, and implementation protocols are essential for the effective implementation of middle school HIV, STI, and pregnancy prevention curricula to achieve the mutual goals of the school and research community.