Oklahoma: HIV Prevention Project Wins $120,000 Award

Since its 1994 launch, the HIV Prevention Project for Women in Oklahoma Prisons has trained 240 women in state prisons to be peer educators. The educational program is now one of the winners of the national Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Program award, which comes with a $120,000 prize.

Once the inmates complete peer education training, they create a 16-hour program, produce program materials, give presentations and recruit future educators and participants. Every woman entering the correctional system is given a handbook designed by the inmates from her facility.

Melanie Spector, evaluation consultant for the Oklahoma Health Department, created the program in the Tulsa County Jail. As the women were sentenced and transferred to prisons around the state, they started to request the program be started in their facility. "My goal is gender equity for women," Spector said. "A lot of HIV education is gender specific. When someone says, 'Wear a condom,' that is a message for a man. We're trying to offer a prevention message contextual to the lives of women in prison."

The state Health Department reports that few female inmates once tested positive for HIV/AIDS, then the rate began to increase in the mid-1990s. The HIV rate per 100,000 for both men and women entering the prison system is several hundred times greater than the rate by gender in the general Oklahoma population, according to the epidemiologic profile report by the Health Department released earlier this year.

An added benefit for the peer educators is the opportunity to earn one hour of college credit. "One of the unanticipated outcomes was women sending their manuals home to their children," Spector said. "We were always running out of manuals. On visiting day, you would see the women reading the manuals with their children and parents." The award money will be used to offer more courses for the peer educators to earn college credit, to purchase computers, and to place some of the materials on CDs. The program was chosen from among 463 nominations.

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