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Marina Lacroix

Impact of Sex and HIV Education Programs on Sexual Behaviors of Youth in Developing and... - 0 views

www.fhi.org/...sexedworkingpaperfinalenyt.pdf

sex education effectiveness research

shared by Marina Lacroix on 13 Mar 09 - No Cached
  • Marina Lacroix on 13 Mar 09
     
    Impact of Sex and HIV Education Programs on Sexual Behaviors of Youth in Developing and Developed Countries (2005, Youth Research Working Paper Series) Sex and HIV education programs that are based on a written curriculum and that are implemented among groups of youth in school, clinic, or community settings are a promising type of intervention to reduce adolescent sexual risk behaviors. This paper summarizes a review of 83 evaluations of such programs in developing and developed countries. The programs typically focused on pregnancy or HIV/STI prevention behaviors, not on broader issues of sexuality such as developmental stages, gender roles, or romantic relationships. The review analyzed the impact programs had on sexual risk-taking behaviors among young people. It addressed two primary research questions: 1) What are the effects, if any, of curriculum-based sex and HIV education programs on sexual risk behaviors, STI and pregnancy rates, and mediating factors such as knowledge and attitudes that affect those behaviors? 2) What are the common characteristics of the curricula-based programs that were effective in changing sexual risk behaviors?
Marina Lacroix

AIDS patient is reported cured - International Herald Tribune - 0 views

www.iht.com/...14hiv.php

HIV_AIDS

shared by Marina Lacroix on 14 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Doctors in Berlin are reporting that they cured a man of AIDS by giving him transplanted blood stem cells from a person naturally resistant to the virus.
  • experts say it will be of little immediate use in treating AIDS
  • the success in his case is evidence that a long-dreamed-of therapy for AIDS — injecting stem cells that have been genetically re-engineered with the mutation — might work.
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  • Top American researchers called the treatment unthinkable for the millions infected in Africa and impractical even for insured patients in top research hospitals.
  • That mutation, discovered in a few gay men in the 1990s and known as Delta 32, must be inherited from both parents. With it, the white blood cells produced in the marrow lack the surface receptors that allow HIV to invade the immune system.
  • Doctors say the case gives hope for therapies that artificially induce the Delta 32 mutation.
Marina Lacroix

BBC NEWS | Health | TV shows link to teen pregnancies - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7707664.stm

sex education teen pregnancy US

shared by Marina Lacroix on 04 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Teenage girls who watch a lot of TV shows with a high sexual content are twice as likely to become pregnant, according to a study.
  • Boys watching similar programmes, like Friends and Sex and the City, were also more likely to get a girl pregnant, the research in Pediatrics found.
  • Study author Dr Anita Chandra of the RAND Corporation
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  • The researchers interviewed 2,000 adolescents aged 12 to 17 three times between 2001 and 2004.
Marina Lacroix

Study cites toll of AIDS policy in South Africa - Print Version - International Herald ... - 0 views

www.iht.com/...printfriendly.php

HIV_AIDS pandemic South-Africa Mbeki

shared by Marina Lacroix on 26 Nov 08 - Cached
  • The document maintained that antiretrovirals were toxic. And it suggested that powerful vested interests — drug companies, governments, scientists — pushed the consensus view of AIDS in a quest for money and power, while peddling centuries-old white racist beliefs that depicted Africans as sexually rapacious.
    • Marina Lacroix
      Marina Lacroix on 26 Nov 08
       
      Reasons why Mbeki did not believe that HIV would exclusively cause AIDS.
  • Jacob Zuma, who is expected to become president after next year's election, himself made a famously questionable remark about AIDS. In his 2006 rape trial, in which he was acquitted of sexually assaulting a family friend, he testified that he sought to reduce his chances of being infected with HIV by taking a shower after sex. Nonetheless, he seems to have more conventional views on the pandemic.
  • A new study by Harvard researchers estimates that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.
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  • Reckoning with a legacy of such policies, Mbeki's's successor, Kgalema Motlanthe, acted on the first day of his presidency two months ago to remove the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, a polarizing figure who had proposed garlic, lemon juice and beetroot as AIDS remedies. He replaced her with Barbara Hogan, who has brought South Africa — the most powerful country in a region at the epicenter of the world's AIDS pandemic — back into the mainstream.
  • They estimated that by 2005, South Africa could have been helping half those in need but had reached only 23 percent. By comparison, Botswana was already providing treatment to 85 percent of those in need, and Namibia to 71 percent.
  • The 330,000 South Africans who died for lack of treatment and the 35,000 babies who perished because they were infected with HIV together lost at least 3.8 million years of life, the study concluded.
  • the researchers had based their estimates on conservative assumptions and used a sound methodology
  • South Africa today is home to 5.7 million people who are HIV-positive — more than any other nation, almost one in five adults. More than 900 people a day die here as a result of AIDS, the United Nations estimates.
Marina Lacroix

Capital Ideas: why Africans don't change their sexual behaviour in response to AIDS - 0 views

www.chicagogsb.edu/...3.aspx

HIV_AIDS sexual behaviour

shared by Marina Lacroix on 08 Jan 09 - Cached
  • In sub-Saharan Africa, 90–95 percent of HIV infections are transmitted through heterosexual sex. As a result, encouraging changes in heterosexual behavior is a large part of the HIV prevention effort in that region. However, research has shown that, on average, Africans have not changed their sexual behavior very much in response to HIV. This is particularly surprising in light of large changes in behavior among another high-risk group—gay men in the United States.
  • results suggest a strong correlation between income, life expectancy, and behavior change. Individuals with higher income and longer expected future life span are more likely to respond to HIV risk by lowering their number of sexual partners.
  • interventions designed to decrease mortality risks, such as malaria, could have significant effects on HIV prevention.
Marina Lacroix

The WIP Contributors: Saving Sex Workers in Malawi - 0 views

thewip.net/...ing_sex_workers_in_malawi.html

HIV_AIDS STDs prostitution Malawi Africa

shared by Marina Lacroix on 31 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Prostitution is deemed unacceptable in Malawi but the sex trade continues to thrive. Large numbers of women, especially young ones, are seen loitering around street corners, near hotels, bars and other entertainment places.
  • She has not been brave enough to go for an HIV test yet. The 2006 Malawi Behavior Surveillance Survey indicates that up to 70 percent of sex workers are HIV positive – this is the highest rate being faced by one group of people in the country – the national prevalence rate for Malawi is 14 percent. AIDS is Malawi’s second leading cause of death after malaria
  • Wochi says she was forced into prostitution by abject poverty. “I found sex work lucrative and I thought it was a very easy way of making money.”
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  • She is paid US$3 for providing sex without using a condom and US$1 for sex with a condom.
  • According to 2008 research findings by the Community Health Department at the University of Malawi, up to 83 percent of prostitutes in Malawi are known to depend solely on sex work for their livelihoods and 95 percent of them have children. Sixty nine percent of the women who are involved in the sex trade are divorced.
  • unprotected sex, which is often practiced by sex workers, is among the key drivers of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Malawi
  • lack of negotiation skills and assertiveness in ensuring safer sex through condom use also aggravates the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted illnesses.
  • UNFPA has since funded the Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM) to work on reducing the transmission of HIV among the prostitutes by empowering them to practice safer sex, and by increasing the sex workers’ access to reproductive health, voluntary counseling and testing.
  • So far, the law in Malawi is silent on prostitution.
  • FPAM is engaging the sex workers by providing them with information, skills for negotiating safer sex (condom use) and alternative livelihood options, says Bessie Nkhwazi, the NGO’s district manager for Lilongwe.
  • FPAM, the government, NGOs and other service providers in Malawi realize that they cannot stop prostitution overnight, so their focus is largely on HIV prevention. And though FPAM and UNFPA create their workplans with the government, it’s mainly for appearances so they can say the government is somehow involved. Some of the money that FPAM receives comes from the National AIDS Commission, which is a government body, but the government is mainly helping to combat child prostitution through the deployment of child protection officers. The implementation of actual programs, especially those for older prostitutes, are really falling on the NGOs.
Marina Lacroix

Child brides give voice to their defiance in Yemen - Print Version - International Hera... - 0 views

www.iht.com/...printfriendly.php

marriage child marriage forced marriage free choice of partners

shared by Marina Lacroix on 31 Oct 08 - Cached
  • One morning last month, Arwa Abdu Muhammad Ali walked out of her husband's house here and ran to a local hospital, where she complained that he had been beating and sexually abusing her for eight months. That alone would be surprising in Yemen, a deeply conservative Arab society where family disputes tend to be solved privately. What made it even more unusual was that Arwa was 9 years old.
  • The average age of marriage in Yemen's rural areas is 12 to 13, a recent study by Sana University researchers found. The country, at the southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.
  • Her father, Ali Muhammad al-Ahdal, said he had agreed to the marriage because two of Nujood's older sisters had been kidnapped and forcibly married, with one of them ending up in jail. Al-Ahdal said he had feared the same thing would happen to Nujood, and early marriage had seemed a better alternative.
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  • Poverty is one reason so many Yemeni families marry their children off early. Another is the fear of girls being carried off and married by force. But most important are cultural tradition and the belief that a young virginal bride can best be shaped into a dutiful wife, according to a comprehensive study of early marriage published by Sana University in 2006.
  • Despite the victory, Nasser and other advocates say they are worried about the lack of legal means to fight early marriage. Nujood's case only reached the court because she took such a wildly unusual step and happened on a sympathetic judge.
Marina Lacroix

Praten over seks onder allochtonen nog taboe - Binnenland - de Volkskrant - 0 views

www.volkskrant.nl/...ks_onder_allochtonen_nog_taboe

sex education immigrants allochtonen youth

shared by Marina Lacroix on 31 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Alle campagnes ten spijt, een moslima zapt bij een tv-spotje over veilig vrijen uit schaamte nog steeds gauw weg.
  • Allochtone jongeren vertonen vaker seksueel risicovol gedrag dan autochtone jongeren. Uit cijfers van de Rutgers Nisso Groep en Soa Aids Nederland blijkt dat allochtone jongeren oververtegenwoordigd zijn als het gaat om seksueel overdraagbare aandoeningen en onbedoelde zwangerschappen. Bovendien zijn zij vaker slachtoffer en dader van seksueel geweld
  • Naar aanleiding van de cijfers laat staatssecretaris Bussemaker van Volksgezondheid deze maand onderzoek doen naar de seksuele gezondheid van allochtone jongeren. Ze wil weten waarom de huidige seksuele voorlichting niet overkomt op deze doelgroep.
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  • ‘Het probleem met de huidige campagnes is dat ze te veel zijn gericht op het witte model’, zegt Paul Poortvliet van onderzoeksbureau Research voor Beleid. ‘Ze sluiten niet aan op de belevingswereld van allochtone jongeren omdat ze bijvoorbeeld te direct zijn.
  • ‘Onder veel moslims is seksuele voorlichting nog steeds taboe. Ouders zijn bang dat ze daarmee hun kinderen juist op verkeerde ideeën brengen en steken liever hun kop in het zand.’
  • Volgens haar zijn steeds meer islamitische meiden al voor het huwelijk seksueel actief. ‘Veel moslimmeiden hebben een vriendje in een andere stad, ver weg van de controle van hun familie. Ze denken dat dit kan omdat ze hun maagdenvlies operatief kunnen laten herstellen als ze gaan trouwen. Dat komt meer voor dan wij denken.’
  • In een traditioneel islamitische opvoeding wordt een assertieve houding van een meisje niet getolereerd. ‘Dan kan je ook niet verwachten dat ze genoeg zelfvertrouwen heeft en nee durft te zeggen tegen een jongen als ze op seksueel gebied iets niet wil. Daar moet ook iets veranderen. We kunnen nieuwe generaties niet weer opzadelen met dit probleem.’
Marina Lacroix

AIDS prevention for women. - By Amanda Schaffer - Slate Magazine - 0 views

www.slate.com/...all

HIV_AIDS STDs microbicides

shared by Marina Lacroix on 31 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Microbicides have long been high on the wish list of grass-roots activists, who see them as the most promising way to prevent AIDS for heterosexual women at high risk of infection from unfaithful husbands or partners, especially in Asia and Africa.
  • Yet to date, research related to their development represents only 2 percent of all AIDS spending by the National Institutes of Health
  • One mathematical model, which focused on Johannesburg, South Africa, predicted that if 75 percent of area residents were to use a 40-percent-effective microbicide in half of the sexual encounters in which they didn't use condoms, the local incidence of HIV infection would drop by 9 percent. That may not sound like much, but across countries and continents, similar percentages could translate into millions of saved lives.
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  • Microbicides could be a particular boon to married women. While condoms have been successful in slowing the spread of AIDS among commercial sex workers and others, their association with illicit sex makes many long-term couples reluctant to use them.
  • Another appeal is that some microbicides are not contraceptives, which means that women who want to get pregnant won't have to choose between exposing themselves to infection and having kids.
Marina Lacroix

Dept. of Disputation: Red Sex, Blue Sex: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...081103fa_fact_talbot

abstinence sex education US youth sexual behaviour teen pregnancy

shared by Marina Lacroix on 17 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.
  • Regnerus argues that religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex, but a poor one of sexual behavior, and that this gap is especially wide among teen-agers who identify themselves as evangelical. The vast majority of white evangelical adolescents—seventy-four per cent—say that they believe in abstaining from sex before marriage. (Only half of mainline Protestants, and a quarter of Jews, say that they believe in abstinence.) Moreover, among the major religious groups, evangelical virgins are the least likely to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable, and the most likely to believe that having sex will cause their partners to lose respect for them. (Jews most often cite pleasure as a reason to have sex, and say that an unplanned pregnancy would be an embarrassment.) But, according to Add Health data, evangelical teen-agers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestants, and Jews. On average, white evangelical Protestants make their “sexual début”—to use the festive term of social-science researchers—shortly after turning sixteen. Among major religious groups, only black Protestants begin having sex earlier.
  • In 2004, the states with the highest divorce rates were Nevada, Arkansas, Wyoming, Idaho, and West Virginia (all red states in the 2004 election); those with the lowest were Illinois, Massachusetts, Iowa, Minnesota, and New Jersey. The highest teen-pregnancy rates were in Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas (all red); the lowest were in North Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Maine (blue except for North Dakota). “The ‘blue states’ of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have lower teen birthrates, higher use of abortion, and lower percentages of teen births within marriage,” Cahn and Carbone observe. They also note that people start families earlier in red states—in part because they are more inclined to deal with an unplanned pregnancy by marrying rather than by seeking an abortion.
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  • This could be because evangelicals are also among the most likely to believe that using contraception will send the message that they are looking for sex. It could also be because many evangelicals are steeped in the abstinence movement’s warnings that condoms won’t actually protect them from pregnancy or venereal disease. More provocatively, Regnerus found that only half of sexually active teen-agers who say that they seek guidance from God or the Scriptures when making a tough decision report using contraception every time. By contrast, sixty-nine per cent of sexually active youth who say that they most often follow the counsel of a parent or another trusted adult consistently use protection.
  • Nationwide, according to a 2001 estimate, some two and a half million people have taken a pledge to remain celibate until marriage.
  • More than half of those who take such pledges—which, unlike abstinence-only classes in public schools, are explicitly Christian—end up having sex before marriage, and not usually with their future spouse.
  • pledgers delay sex eighteen months longer than non-pledgers, and have fewer partners. Yet, according to the sociologists Peter Bearman, of Columbia University, and Hannah Brückner, of Yale, communities with high rates of pledging also have high rates of S.T.D.s.
  • Bearman and Brückner have also identified a peculiar dilemma: in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost.
  • Even more important than religious conviction, Regnerus argues, is how “embedded” a teen-ager is in a network of friends, family, and institutions that reinforce his or her goal of delaying sex, and that offer a plausible alternative to America’s sexed-up consumer culture.
  • Teen-agers who live with both biological parents are more likely to be virgins than those who do not. And adolescents who say that their families understand them, pay attention to their concerns, and have fun with them are more likely to delay intercourse, regardless of religiosity.
  • Another key difference in behavior, Regnerus reports, is that evangelical Protestant teen-agers are significantly less likely than other groups to use contraception.
  • The five states with the lowest median age at marriage are Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas, and Kentucky, all red states, while those with the highest are all blue: Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The red-state model puts couples at greater risk for divorce; women who marry before their mid-twenties are significantly more likely to divorce than those who marry later. And younger couples are more likely to be contending with two of the biggest stressors on a marriage: financial struggles and the birth of a baby before, or soon after, the wedding.
  • Some of these differences in sexual behavior come down to class and education. Regnerus and Carbone and Cahn all see a new and distinct “middle-class morality” taking shape among economically and socially advantaged families who are not social conservatives.
  • In Regnerus’s survey, the teen-agers who espouse this new morality are tolerant of premarital sex (and of contraception and abortion) but are themselves cautious about pursuing it.
  • Because these teen-agers see abstinence as unrealistic, they are not opposed in principle to sex before marriage—just careful about it.
  • Each of these models of sexual behavior has drawbacks—in the blue-state scheme, people may postpone child-bearing to the point where infertility becomes an issue.
  • But Carbone and Cahn argue that the red-state model is clearly failing on its own terms—producing high rates of teen pregnancy, divorce, sexually transmitted disease, and other dysfunctional outcomes that social conservatives say they abhor
  • Evangelicals could start, perhaps, by trying to untangle the contradictory portrayals of sex that they offer to teen-agers. In the Shelby Knox documentary, a youth pastor, addressing an assembly of teens, defines intercourse as “what two dogs do out on the street corner—they just bump and grind awhile, boom boom boom.” Yet a typical evangelical text aimed at young people, “Every Young Woman’s Battle,” by Shannon Ethridge and Stephen Arterburn, portrays sex between two virgins as an ethereal communion of innocent souls: “physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pleasure beyond description.”
  • A new “abstinence-plus” curriculum, now growing in popularity, urges abstinence while providing accurate information about contraception and reproduction for those who have sex anyway.
  • It might help, too, not to present virginity as the cornerstone of a virtuous life. In certain evangelical circles, the concept is so emphasized that a girl who regrets having been sexually active is encouraged to declare herself a “secondary” or “born-again” virgin. That’s not an idea, surely, that helps teen-agers postpone sex or have it responsibly.
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