Black men who have sex with men (MSM) have the highest rates of HIV infection in the United States and represent a population in need of new HIV prevention interventions. Although 20 to 40% of Black MSM are estimated to have female partners, no interventions tailored to the needs of Black MSM/W have been developed and rigorously evaluated. Philadelphia Health Management Corporation proposes to develop, implement, and evaluate an individual-level intervention (ILI), titled """"""""Connections"""""""", that will assist Black MSM/W to reduce their risk for acquiring and transmitting HIV infection. This intervention will address the effect of individual level factors, interpersonal relationships including sexual, peer and family relationships, and sociocultural influences on the sexual risk behaviors of MSM/W. The intervention will consist of six counseling sessions held between a social worker (intervention specialist) and participant, and will be guided by three theoretical perspectives: an ecological perspective of behavior, stress and coping theory, and social cognitive theory. The COLOURS Organization, the sole agency in Philadelphia dedicated to exclusively serving the Black LGBT community, will be a key collaborator in the development and implementation of the intervention. The evaluation design utilizes a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of the proposed intervention. Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) will be used to recruit 250 HIV-positive and HIV-negative Black bisexuallyactive men into this study.
The specific aims of this research are to: 1. develop a new theoretically-based individual-level HIV prevention intervention culturally tailored to the needs of HIV-positive and HIV-negative Black MSM/W;2. evaluate the intervention with a randomized control group design, using RDS to recruit 250 Black MSM/W who do not inject drugs and who report recent unprotected sex;3. assess the efficacy of the intervention and test the intervention model through the collection of behavioral risk assessments and HIV and STD testing at three time points: baseline, immediately post-intervention and three-months post-intervention;4. examine and describe individual factors, interpersonal relationships and network factors, and socio-cultura factors that may affect risk behaviors for HIV infection and transmission among Black MSM/W;and, 5. develop recommendations for recruiting Black bisexually-active men and providing them with targeted HIV prevention interventions. Evaluation data collection will be conducted using ACASI. Data analysis will include Repeated Measures ANOVA to make assessments of changes over time and intervention dose effects and structural equation modeling to assess causal associations between factors in the conceptual model. This proposed study has significance for increasing our understanding various types of factors that may affect sexual risk behaviors of Black MSM/W as well as potentially providing an important new tool for HIV prevention specifically targeting the needs and risk behaviors of Black MSM/W.
