Reducing HIV Infection Among Youth: What Can Schools Do?

In the words of Ellen Weiss, the Director of Research Utilization of the Horizon Program "this report focuses on initial findings from a three-country study that is examining whether school HIV prevention programs are strong enough to move beyond their traditional role of increasing knowledge and positive attitudes concerning HIV/AIDS to successfully foster behavior change."

Key findings of the report include:

• A majority of girls have not had penetrative sex.
• Students have misconceptions regarding their peers' level of sexual activity.
• Student's HIV knowledge is uneven, no matter whether the country has had a long or short history of the epidemic, low or high HIV prevalence, or a strong national HIV prevention campaign.
• Sexually experienced students do not always see themselves at higher risk of HIV infection than sexually inexperienced youth.
• Students have ambivalent feelings about people living with HIV.

Conclusions regarding implications for school-based programs include:

• Teachers need to be prepared for students with a range of experiences.
• Strategies for negotiating or refusing sex should take into account the intermittent nature of adolescent sex.
• Courses should examine peer pressure.
• Programs need to teach students to accurately assess their personal risk of HIV.
• Teachers and curricula planners need to know that students know some things about HIV but that they also misunderstand or are unaware of other aspects of HIV.
• Programs need to talk about PLHA.
• Programs need to address condom use.

This analysis will assist programmers identify both student needs and the strengths and limits of school-based HIV preventions programmes.