Using focus groups to refine an African American church-based HIV intervention

The Black church has been and continues to be an influential institution in the African American community. Yet, the Black church has virtually been an untapped setting for HIV education and prevention interventions. Taking It to the Pews (TIPS) is an initiative to promote HIV education and prevention using religiously-tailored tool kit materials with 12 African American churches. To explore how best to refine and develop new TIPS tool kit materials and to understand challenges in facilitating church-based HIV interventions, four focus groups were held with 26 church leaders from the TIPS initiative. Overall, focus group participants commented on how easy it was to use the tool kit materials within their normal church activities and how their members were very receptive to receiving HIV information in the church. Participants provided suggestions on how to further enhance the TIPS initiative, including having more interactive educational games, developing more tailored brochures and activities for youth and men, and pairing up more experienced TIPS churches with churches that were new to the project. Participants commented that HIV stigma, the need for more HIV training for church staff and volunteers, and topics on sex communication and premarital sex were barriers to churches' participation in HIV education and prevention programs. We will discuss how focus group findings were used to further develop and refine the TIPS initiative along with how the findings have guided the development of Taking It to the Pews -Youth, a new HIV initiative developed specifically for youth in African American churches.