Latino adolescents are at high risk for contracting HIV/AIDS. Few individual and even fewer parent interventions have been developed to address this persistent problem. Parent-communication interventions provide an opportunity to enhance individual adolescent based approaches. However, there is a need for theory and culture based interventions focused on Latino parents. The purpose of this study is to examine the efficacy of a brief culturally appropriate and theory-based parental communication intervention designed to improve parent-adolescent sexual communication and reduce adolescent sexual risk behavior. This brief computer based intervention will target Spanish dominant Latino families. In the proposed randomized controlled trial, families, defined in this study as parents (n=174) and adolescents 14 to 17 years of age (n = 174), will be recruited from a community-based organization and assigned to (a) a parental communication intervention or (b) a wait-list treatment control condition. Parents in the computer based intervention will receive content about adolescent sexual risk and HIV prevention, strategies to support sexual specific communication and parent-adolescent communication in general. Parents in the wait list control group will receive the intervention at 3 months follow-up. All adolescents and parents will complete pre-test and 3 month follow-up measures. This study will utilize an existing community-university partnership, the Detroit URC (Urban Research Collaboration) and principles of community based participatory research in the design and conduct of the study. We will to address 3 aims to examine whether the computer based parental communication intervention is: 1) associated with a greater increase in parents' comfort with, and quantity of communication; 2) associated with a greater increase in adolescents' intentions to abstain from sex and/or avoid unprotected intercourse and decreased self-reported intercourse and unprotected intercourse; and 3) feasible and acceptable to Spanish dominant Latino parents and their adolescent children. Results from this study will inform a larger RCT to test and examine the efficacy of this intervention in various practice and community settings. To our knowledge this will be the first computer based intervention focused on communication regarding sexual behavior designed for Latinos. The long term goal of this program of research is to reduce Latino adolescents' HIV sexual risk behavior by providing Latino parents with sufficient resources to facilitate effective sexual communication with their adolescents. This is an important effort in reducing HIV sexual risk for Latino adolescents. ? ? ?
| Gaioso, Vanessa Pirani; Villarruel, Antonia Maria; Wilson, Lynda Anne et al. (2015) A Path Analysis of Latino Parental, Teenager and Cultural Variables in Teenagers' Sexual Attitudes, Norms, Self-Efficacy, and Sexual Intentions. Rev Lat Am Enfermagem 23:500-11 |
| Villarruel, Antonia M; Loveland-Cherry, Carol J; Ronis, David L (2010) Testing the Efficacy of a Computer-Based Parent-Adolescent Sexual Communication Intervention for Latino Parents. Fam Relat 59:533-543 |
