Evaluation of an evidence-based HIV prevention intervention to enhance relevance in African American faith settings

Background: African American youth are particularly at risk for STDs and HIV/AIDS in North Carolina. Finding effective ways to address the prevention needs of youth and engage faith settings, a cornerstone of the African American community, may help reduce HIV/AIDS disparities. Our community-academic partnership used a CBPR approach to implement and evaluate a CDC-designated high impact prevention intervention, Focus on Youth (FOY) + ImPACT (Informed Parents and Children Together). Methods: We conducted two focus groups with sixteen participants from our Community Advisory Board consisting of youth, parents, and diverse faith leaders to identify facilitators and barriers to HIV prevention in faith settings and six post intervention focus groups with thirty-five youth and parent intervention participants to assess program effectiveness and curriculum strengths. Results: Qualitative data analysis revealed facilitators and barriers to implementing an HIV prevention program for youth in faith settings. Facilitators included the perception of church as a safe place for imparting life lessons, religious social support, and building on church friendship groups. Barriers included FOY's comprehensive sexual education focus, perceived as contradictory to church abstinence teachings, congregation resistance to a non faith-based curriculum, and church leadership's limited experience in promoting open discussion about HIV prevention. Findings indicated that FOY was well received by participants, improved HIV prevention knowledge and parent-child communication. Conclusion: Findings suggest adapting FOY to faith settings will improve program effectiveness and fit. Identifying effective ways to implement HIV prevention in faith settings could have an impact on reducing HIV/AIDS and changing African American church norms.