“Straight Talk” for African-American heterosexual men: Results of a single-arm behavioral intervention trial

Abstract

In the United States, heterosexual transmission is the second leading cause of HIV/AIDS, and two-thirds of all heterosexually acquired cases diagnosed between 2005 and 2008 occurred among African-Americans. Few HIV prevention interventions have been designed specifically for African-American heterosexual men not seeking clinical treatment. Here we report results of a single-arm intervention trial of a theory-based HIV prevention intervention designed to increase condom use, reduce concurrent partnering and increase HIV testing among heterosexually active African-American men living in high HIV prevalence areas of New York City. We tested our hypothesis using McNemar discordant pairs exact test for binary variables and paired t-tests for continuous variables. We observed statistically significant declines in mean number of total and new female partners, unprotected sex partners, and partner concurrency in both primary and nonprimary sex partnerships between baseline and 3 months postintervention.

Keywords:

• HIV prevention
• African-American
• heterosexual
• behavioral intervention
• condom use
• partner concurrency

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the assistance of Darigg Brown, Malik Cupid, Sara Gillen, Ronnald Harriotte, Donna Hubbard McCree, Vijay Nandi, Babatunde Oyelade, Jerome Payne, Nairobi Shellow, Stephen Smith, and Raekiela Taylor, and thank the men who gave their time and efforts to participate in this study. At the time that work was conducted Dr Bonner and Ms. Bond were affiliated with the Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies, New York Academy of Medicine. This study was supported by cooperative agreement from the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, CDC award number: 1-UR6/PS-000667-01. Dr Frye's work was also supported through a NIDA mentored career development award (K01 DA-020774). The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.