Impact of a secondary prevention intervention among HIV-positive older women

Abstract

Despite the fact that older women represent a growing risk group for HIV, they have been rarely targeted by public health campaigns designed to prevent HIV/AIDS and are often excluded from many prevention studies. This unique cohort may be often overlooked due to beliefs that older women are not sexually active and do not engage in high risk sexual activity. Data suggest a need for increased attention to this unique cohort. Risk reduction interventions tailored to the special needs of people living with HIV/AIDS have begun to demonstrate promising results. In this manuscript, we report the 6 month outcomes for female participants in Project ROADMAP, a secondary prevention intervention designed to reduce high risk sexual behavior in older adults living with HIV/AIDS. Our results indicate that female participants in the intervention group were more likely to report a reduction in high risk sexual behavior than women in the control condition. Our findings also suggest that the intervention succeeded in increasing the HIV-related knowledge of the participants and decreasing their stigma vis-à-vis the HIV condition. The study findings suggest that Project ROADMAP is an effective secondary prevention intervention for sexually active older HIV positive women.

Behavioral interventions to promote condom use among women living with HIV: a systematic review update

“…Even after contact with authors by e-mail, another 3 studies that met the inclusion criteria could not be included in the meta-analysis, since no further information was obtained about either the absolute number of women living with HIV engaged in safe sex or the mean and standard deviation of protected sexual acts 42,43,44 , besides another study due to lack of further information on analyses done on intervention effects by gender 45 . We identified only 1 non-randomized study 46 which provided complete data on female participants, which was not included in the meta-analysis to avoid potential confounding.…”

“…The intervention facilitators were only health workers in 6 interventions 36,38,39,40,43,46 , health workers plus peer leaders in 4 interventions 29,41,44,45 , and only peer leaders in 1 intervention 37 . One intervention was computerdelivered 35 and another failed to report this information 42 .…”

“…Only 6 studies explicitly mentioned that gender issues were included in the interventions 29,37,38,41,43,44 . Eight interventions focused primarily on changing sexual risk behavior and secondarily included such issues as HIV status disclosure, health care, and social support 29,37,39,41,42,43,44,45 . Four interventions also encompassed drug use 35,38,40,46 and another covered mental health issues 36 .…”

“…Considering the 13 studies included in the systematic review, most involved group-level interventions 29,36,37,38,41,42,43,44,45 and were delivered in settings for HIV care 29,35,38,39,42,43,44,45,46 . One was home-based 40 and another 3 were developed in community settings 36,37,41 .…”

“…We decided to include the 5 interventions in the systematic review and describe the results reported narratively by the authors. All 5 studies were developed in the United States, and 3 involved interventions targeting women living with HIV 42,43,44 . Kalichman et al 45 conducted interventions for women and men living with HIV separately, and Fisher et al 46 included both female and male participants in the intervention or comparison groups.…”