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This article presents preliminary findings of a randomized HIV prevention study in Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. The study centers on a family HIV workshop aimed at strengthening parenting skills that are empirically linked to reducing adolescent HIV exposure and other sexual risks. These skills include parental monitoring; educating youth about HIV, sex, and other sexually transmitted infections (STI's); and discussing cultural and interpersonal pressures to have sex. Participants include 180 primary caregivers and their 12-14-year-old adolescents randomized to either the Trinidad and Tobago family HIV Workshop (N = 92) or a general workshop (N = 88). Intervention and control group participants completed pretest and posttest measures on parenting and HIV risk outcomes. Compared to controls, intervention parents reported improvements in HIV knowledge (d = .79); attitudes toward AIDS (d = .42); general communication with adolescents (d = .94); conversations with adolescents about sex (d = .95); conversations about sexual risks and values (d = .43); monitoring of adolescents (d = .34); conflicts with adolescents (d = .30); and intensity of daily parenting hassles (d = .35). Intervention and control parents did not differ in behavioral control, use of positive parenting techniques, and expansion of support networks. Implications for addressing rising HIV risks among young people in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean are discussed.
Caribbean leaders have designated HIV as a serious threat to health and ecomonic development (CAREC, 2008). The relatively small region records the highest adult HIV prevalence in the Americas and second highest in the world after sub-Saharan Africa. Although individual Caribbean countries do not have large, generalized HIV epidemics, several including Trinidad and Tobago are experiencing significant upsurges in HIV and AIDS especially among youth (CAREC, 2008). In Trinidad and Tobago, around half of new HIV cases are in young people ages 10-24 years, a group comprising around 28% of the country's population. AIDS is the leading cause of death in this age group (Office of the Prime Minister, Trinidad and Tobago, 2008). Elevated HIV rates are linked to another trend; that is, a significant number of young people in Trinidad and Tobago that have early and unprotected sex in unions that are devoid of emotional or social commitment in which they pay scant attention to sexual diseases...