This research will be conducted primarily in Miahutlan, Oaxaca Mexico in collaboration with Dr. Francisco Ortiz within the context of an extensive rural primary care program - IMSS-OPPORTUNIDADES. This grant is an extension of an NIH grant """"""""Reducing HIV Risk Among Mexican Youth"""""""" (R01 NR008059) that is currently being conducted in an urban setting in Monterrey, Mexico. This study builds upon current success in designing and conducting culturally sensitive randomized control studies with Mexican adolescents and their families. The proposed study will examine the efficacy of a theory-based parent-communication intervention in Oaxaca, Mexico with parents (n=170) and their adolescents (ages 14 - 17 years). Families will be randomly assigned to the parental communication condition or a wait-list control condition. Parents will receive in small parent groups, content about adolescent sexual risk and HIV prevention, strategies to support HIV content specific communication and parent-adolescent communication in general. We will address the following specific aims: 1) examine whether the parental communication intervention causes is associated with an increase in parents' comfort with and quantity of communication (general and HIV specific) at post intervention and at 3 month follow up; 2) examine whether the effects of the intervention is associated with a greater increase in adolescents' intentions to abstain from sex or avoid unprotected intercourse, and decrease self-reported intercourse and unprotected intercourse; and 3) examine the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention in a rural setting of Oaxaca, Mexico. Repeated measures analysis of variance will be used to determine effects of the intervention, and descriptive statistical analysis will be conducted on feedback data to determine the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention. Results of this study will be provide important practical and theoretical information about the influence of parents on adolescent risk behaviors and will be the basis for determining future intervention efforts with this population.
