Study Examines Effects of HIV/STI Intervention Prevention in Inner-City Black Women

"Effects on Sexual Risk Behavior and STD Rate of Brief HIV/STD Prevention Interventions for African-American Women in Primary Care Settings," American Journal of Public Health: The study examined the efficacy of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infection risk-reduction intervention among inner-city black women. For the study, researchers Loretta Sweet Jemmott and John Jemmott both of the University of Pennsylvania and Ann O'Leary of CDC studied 564 black women with an average age of 27 who visited a Newark, N.J., women's clinic. The women were assigned to several different forms of intervention, including one-on-one HIV/STI behavioral skill building, HIV/STI behavioral group skill building and a health information intervention control group. After one year, researchers found that participants in the skill-building groups reported having less unprotected sex than those in the information groups. Researchers concluded that brief single-session, one-on-one or group skill-building interventions in primary care settings might reduce risky HIV/STI behavior among inner-city black women (Sweet Jemmott et al., AJPH, June 2007).