The proposed study seeks to compare a conventional AIDS education program emphasizing personal risk (Eurocentric) with an alternative program highlighting risk to family and community (Afrocentric) designed for urban minority pregnant women in Cleveland, OH. The program is designed to meet the growing, urgent need to develop ethnically appropriate and effective AIDS interventions in American inner-city neighborhoods. The test curriculum is derived from the Conservation of Resources Theory, whose principles accommodate many observations that have been made concerning the barriers to AIDS reduction behaviors among urban Blacks. The curriculum emphasizes the implications of maternal HIV infection upon the clients' babies and support the mother's role as a principal protector of the welfare of her children and family. The education program will be administered at four sites into an existing, highly successful and funded program, the Perinatal Project, which enrolls disenfranchised, pregnant, inner-city women into prenatal and infant care. The AIDS education study will enroll and achieve complete follow-up of 300 women per curriculum (total n = 600). Fundamentally, the study comprises a randomized two group pre-post-test design, with post-test measures taken at 6 and 12 months following the birth of the child. In addition to self-report data, three surrogate markers of success, namely unplanned pregnancy, contraction of other sexually transmitted diseases, and condom use, will be measured over the same time. Mediating variables (skills, mastery, and sociodemographics) also will be examined. Analyses comprise standard multivariate tests, including hierarchical regression, logistic regression, and multifactorial repeated measures analyses of variance.
| Toltzis, P; Stephens, R C; Adkins, I et al. (1999) Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-related risk-taking behaviors in women attending inner-city prenatal clinics in the mid-west. J Perinatol 19:483-7 |
