Cultural Appropriateness and Relevance to the Population

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DISCUSSION RESPONSES WK10

Instructions:

Begin engaging in a discussion and continue to interact frequently with your colleagues through Sunday by expanding on a colleague’s strategy for creating culturally sensitive and appropriate partnerships. Please respond to 2 collegues

Collegue#1 DISC

Sister to Sister

Sister to Sister is a brief 20-minute, one-on-one, skill-based HIV/sexually transmitted disease (STD) risk-reduction behavioral intervention for sexually active African American women between the ages of 18 to 45. This intervention is delivered through the course of routine medical visit. The main idea of this program is to provide intensive, culturally sensitive health information to empower and educate women. It also strives to help women understand the various behaviors that put them at risk for HIV and other STDs. The program also enhances women’s knowledge, beliefs, confidence and skills to help reduce their risk for STDs, especially HIV (“Sister to Sister”, 2018).

Cultural Appropriateness and Relevance to the Population.

The original program was designed for African American women, but has since branched out and is for high-risk sexually active women 18-45 years old who have a male partner and attend a primary health care clinic. Based on the research results from the CDC, compared with women in the control group, women in the skills-building interventions reported reduced HIV risk-associated sexual behavior, reduced frequency of sexual intercourse, reduced unprotected sexual intercourse, fewer sex partners, using condoms more often, but no effect on social desirability of condom use. The intervention research was statistically significant and was effective in terms of cultural appropriateness sand relevance to the population (“Sister to Sister”, 2018).

Culturally Appropriate Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Strategies

Community based participatory research (CBPR) recognizes that an outsider (e.g. researcher) can work best with community partners, who themselves are experts. To make this intervention more culturally appropriate and a community based participatory research, one could collaborate with leaders in the African American community and leaders in women’s health to earn the trust of African American women so that they will engage more receptively to the program and will follow through on completing the program. We should reach out to the community members and identify if HIV infection rates are a major concern for them to help getting them thinking about the pathology prior to establishing or implementing an intervention (Rhodes, Duck, Alonzo, Ulloa & Aronson, 2013).

References

Rhodes, S., Duck, S., Alonzo, J., Ulloa, J., & Aronson, R. (2013). Using Community-Based Participatory Research to Prevent HIV Disparities. JAIDS Journal Of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 63, S32-S35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/qai.0b013e3182920015

Sister to Sister. (2018). High Impact Prevention. Retrieved 2 May 2018, from https://effectiveinterventions.cdc.gov/en/HighImpactPrevention/Interventions/SISTERtoSISTER.aspx

COLLEGUE#2 DISC

Description of the intervention you chose.

The intervention program I chose was CLEAR: Choosing Life: Empowerment! Action! Results! This is a male & female sexual behavior intervention program for HIV/AIDS individuals , age 16 years and up. The program consists of five core value improvements; emotional constraint, self-esteem improvement, personal goal targeting, critical thinking development, and communicational and behavioral (U.S. Center for Disease Control, 2018).

Explain whether the intervention as described was effective in terms of cultural appropriateness and relevance to the population.

According to the program informational literature, this was a culturally effective intervention. The statistics given were that condom use among youth, overall, increased by 36% and condom use among HIV-negative partners increased by 41%. As far as culturally relevant and appropriate, I can’t think of a better demographic, a culture influenced by raging hormones, alcohol, and/or drugs (U.S. Center for Disease Control, 2018). With regards to efficacy, the stats are very impressive for this amount of behavioral change for this demographic.

Explain culturally appropriate community based participatory research (CBPR) strategies you might use to make the intervention more culturally appropriate and explain why you chose these strategies.

I feel that using social media and thinking regionally could have a great positive impact on this type of intervention, especially given the demographics (School of Public Health: UC Berkley, 2012). These CBPR strategies could have a quicker adaptation and implementation for the successful outcome on a broader scale.

Reference

School of Public Health: UC Berkley (2012). Community-Based Participatory Research: A Strategy for Building Healthy Communities and Promoting Health through Policy Change. Retrieved from http://www.policylink.org/sites/default/files/CBPR.pdf

U.S. Center for Disease Control, C. (2018). CLEAR: CHOOSING LIFE: EMPOWERMENT! ACTION! RESULTS! A One-on-one Intervention with Youth and Adults Living with HIV/AIDS. Retrieved from https://effectiveinterventions.cdc.gov/docs/default-source/clear-docs/clearfactsheet.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Questions on Collegue#2 DISCUSSION

Thank you for your post on CLEAR. It seems like a very effective program that has the potential to assist many people. You mentioned that using social media would have a positive impact on the participants. Could you provide an example of how social media would positively influence participants? Social media is sometimes frowned upon and there are some that argue that there is nothing positive that results from its use. I was wondering what methods do you think would help the target audience from using social media as a platform.