Progressive Prevention for Parishioners: The Adaptation of an HIV Intervention for African American Older Adult Women in Faith-Based Institutions

African American mature women represent the fastest growing group of individuals living with HIV. We describe how the ADAPT-ITT Model was used to adapt SISTA, a CDC-evidence-based intervention for young African American women, to enhance its relevance for African American women 35-55 years of age.

Applying the ADAPT-ITT Model, university researchers partnered with the Church Advisory Board (CAB) of a large church and; Assessed middle age and older women's HIV risk via focus groups with the Women's Ministry, Health Ministry, and HIV/AIDS Ministry in conjunction with elicitation interviews of church pastors and elders, Decided to use the SISTA HIV Intervention, Administered theatre tests with the target population to facilitate adapting the SISTA HIV curricula, Topic experts from the church further enhanced the relevancy of the SISTA curricula for faith settings, Integrated feedback from focus groups, topic experts and theatre testing to create the final HIV curricula, known as Ladies First, Trained facilitators to implement Ladies First, and Testing of the efficacy of Ladies First in a randomized trial is currently underway.

Expertise and flexibility of researchers, CAB members and the community is essential to ensure relevancy of a faith-based HIV curricula that adheres to the core elements of the original SISTA intervention.

A guideline for the structured process of adapting interventions must be disseminated not only in medical settings but also social settings such as, faith institutions. Applying ADAPT-ITT to modify interventions can enhance fidelity to the original intervention, ownership, efficacy and cultural relevance to the adapted intervention.