Religious groups as diffusers of HIV antibody testing and prevention messages

Abstract

Using a quasi‐experimental design, this study examined how delivering a brief training to volunteers in church congregations impacted (a) church volunteers' persistence in delivering HIV antibody testing messages over time and (b) HIV antibody testing behavior of the church volunteers themselves. Church volunteers attended a briefing regarding delivery of public health messages to others and the churches were assigned to either: (a) a trained condition, where 345 volunteers received an additional 3‐hour training in diffusing HIV prevention messages, or (b) a comparison condition, where 199 volunteers received no HIV‐specific training. Three months after the intervention, church volunteers in the HIV‐trained condition reported delivering an HIV antibody testing and prevention message to more community members than volunteers in the comparison condition. Those in the HIV‐trained condition also reported significantly higher levels of comfort and self‐efficacy in delivering HIV prevention messages than volunteers in the comparison condition. However, the trained volunteers did not themselves get tested for HIV at higher rates than the untrained volunteers. Training church volunteers for community diffusion of HIV prevention messages is an efficient strategy for diffusing HIV messages. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Parents' beliefs of the Black Church's role in teen pregnancy prevention

“…increasing fruit and vegetable consumption, increasing breast cancer screening rates), few have focused sexual health (Campbell et al, 2007;DeHaven, Hunter, Wilder, Walton, & Berry, 2004). Of the previous studies related to sexual health in the Black Church, most have focused on HIV prevention efforts with adults, while few included adolescents (Griffith, Picon, Campbell, & Allen, 2010;Lightfoot et al, 2001). HIV interventions implemented in black churches have resulted in increased HIV knowledge, perceived risk of HIV, self-efficacy in sexual situations, abstinence intentions, and decreased sexual partners (Baldwin et al, 2008;Sherr & Dyer, 2010;Wingood et al, 2013).…”

Effects of a Pilot Church-Based Intervention to Reduce HIV Stigma and Promote HIV Testing Among African Americans and Latinos

“…First, although several church-based HIV interventions are reported in the literature, we know of only one that has used randomization at the church level to assess effectiveness [30]. Second, our primary focus was explicitly on HIV stigma, rather than on general education about HIV prevention, reducing HIV risk behavior, [28, 29] or the promotion of HIV testing [23, 70]. Third, we implemented the intervention in a diverse set of congregational settings.…”

An Intervention to Reduce HIV-Related Stigma in Partnership With African American and Latino Churches

“…First, we focus on stigma reduction integrated with HIV testing rather than more general education about HIV prevention, reducing HIV risk behavior (Griffith et al, 2010; Wingood et al, 2011) or primarily the promotion of HIV testing (Berkley-Patton et al, 2010; Lightfoot et al, 2001). Recent work by Berkley-Patton et al (Berkley-Patton, Thompson, et al, 2012) has incorporated a focus on HIV-related stigma into an HIV awareness and screening intervention and has begun to explore stigma as an outcome of the intervention (Berkley-Patton et al, 2013) as opposed to only a predictor of screening (Berkley-Patton, Moore, et al, 2012).…”