ASSESSING THE DIFFERENTIAL IMPACT OF AN HIV PREVENTION INTERVENTION: WHO'S PUTTING THE MESSAGE INTO PRACTICE?

The article presents information on the findings of a study assessing the differential impact of educational interventions aimed at reducing HIV risk behaviors. Recent data have suggested that educational interventions aimed at reducing HIV risk behaviors have shown some success. But these interventions do not always reduce risk behavior and the success of interventions may be related to participant characteristics. The majority of the 741 participants in the study who completed an AIDS educational intervention report decreasing five out of six risk behaviors including unprotected sex and drug injection. Different variables were also found to be related to changes in the various risk behaviors. It was also found that the gender and education level were also not related to changes in any of the risk behaviors. Implications include the importance of developing approaches to retain higher proportions of younger participants, males and homeless in interventions. It was found to be particularly important to develop specific approaches to retain women in interventions. Another finding is that very little is known about the effectiveness of HIV prevention interventions in low seroprevalence and less urban areas and federally funded studies for injection drug abusers in the United States have focused on large cities only.