Pregnancy Serves As Opportune Time For HIV Prevention Education

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Also Included In: Sexual Health / STDs;  Pregnancy / Obstetrics
Article Date: 22 Sep 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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Coupling an HIV prevention program with group prenatal care may be an effective method of reducing risks for HIV and sexually transmitted infections.

Researchers bundled an HIV prevention program with group prenatal care and examined its effect on STI incidence, repeat pregnancy, sexual risk behavior and psychosocial risk. Among the sample of 1,047, the average age of participants was 20.4 years and 80 percent were African American women. Researchers found that women assigned to the HIV-prevention group intervention were significantly less likely to have repeat pregnancy at six months postpartum than individual-care and attention-matched controls. Furthermore, they demonstrated increased condom use and decreased unprotected sexual intercourse compared with individual-care and attention-matched controls.

"Pregnancy may be an important window of opportunity to foster behavioral change and improve the health of women across multiple domains," Reported researchers. "Making HIV/STI prevention a part of prenatal care may prove to be a useful tool in the reduction of HIV, STIs and repeat pregnancy."

Source
American Journal of Public Health

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