Virginia: HIV-Prevention Program Gets Black Women Talking

The Sisters Informing Sisters About Topics on AIDS (SISTA) Project is a peer-led prevention intervention that engages young black women nationwide, including in Richmond, where for five, once-weekly two-hour sessions, five young women sat and talked about relationships, self-worth, and HIV/AIDS. Of Virginia's 1,290 new HIV/AIDS cases in 2004, 383 were females, of whom 304 were black.

Among the program's aims are to give women the information and skills needed to be an equal partner in healthy relationships, avoid HIV risk behaviors, and increase condom use. Participants talked about what they have done to hold on to a man, things they would not do to keep men in their lives, and how to have positive self-esteem while living without a partner.

Sessions are outlined but can be freely adapted by facilitators. A talk on self-esteem might include discussion about black women artists and entrepreneurs. Role-playing participants might ask a partner about using condoms. After the five sessions, participants return for two- and four-month follow-up "booster sessions." Group leaders, who can be HIV-positive or -negative, are recruited from community-based programs that include an HIV prevention component.

"You are giving them tools to use," said YuVonda Garrett, a program administration specialist at the Virginia Department of Health who trains SISTA group leaders. "So they are prepared if they are in a situation, they know what they are going to say, what they are going to do," said Garrett. "You talk about the difference between aggressive, assertive, and passive. You talk about alcohol and drugs. ... You talk about what it means to be a black woman, how to be proud of who you are, she said. "It's a healing process -- spiritually, emotionally, physically."

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