Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.): An evaluation of program efficacy based on social science theory and available alternatives--Ashley Thomas


Introduction: The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) Program
I remember when he first came into our classroom. He was very tall, neatly dressed, and very austere (I didn’t know that word at the time, but it perfectly encapsulates his demeanor). Then again, as a fifth-grader, everyone is very tall, anyone in uniform always appears neatly dressed, and all adults are austere. He quietly sat in the back of the room until our teacher, Mrs. English, introduced him. Despite how vivid all of his physical characteristics and mannerisms still are, I cannot remember his name, so for our purposes, we’ll refer to him as Officer Joe. Officer Joe was a trained officer of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) in-school program, and our classroom was his “beat” for the next few weeks.
Developed in 1983, D.A.R.E. is an in-school curriculum that addresses pressures placed on youth regarding drug use and violence (1). It has since expanded from its original home of Los Angeles to around 80% of United States school districts and 43 countries worldwide (1). Intrinsic to the program, making it unique among other in-school drug resistance education programs, is the incorporation of local law-enforcement personnel (2). Over a series of 16 weekly lessons, the officer charged with educating the students introduces facts about drug use (both underage and otherwise) and violence, while giving the students tools and strategies to employ later on should they be confronted with a, “…high-risk, low-gain choice…” (3)(4). At the program’s culmination, lesson 17, participating students will reflect upon what they have learned and what they hope to carry with them going forward.
The D.A.R.E. program was borne out of Nancy Reagan’s directive to children to, “Just say no!” to drugs and alcohol (5). Despite its current ubiquity, the D.A.R.E. program has been the target of many analyses and criticisms decrying its efficacy. In some cases, it achieves no measurable effect, certainly not enough to warrant the resources necessary for its implementation. While the program has, admirably, evolved significantly in response to these evidence based evaluations, understanding past failed strategies will be integral to creating new, more effective curricula.
In context, as of 2010 (most recently available data), drug and alcohol usage rates among teens and young adults climbed compared to past years. Among youth aged 12-17, the rate of illicit drug use was about 10% and about 7% reported currently using marijuana. The data is much starker when looking at alcohol: 29% of those surveyed reported being current users. Within this category, 25% of those aged 12-17 reported current use, and nearly 50% of those aged 18-20 reported current use in the past month (6). As was demonstrated not only by multiple meta-analyses, but also by the persistence of drug and alcohol use among minors, D.A.R.E. fails to resonate with the students for whom the program is tailored. This failure comes at high cost to the school, the state, and the federal government (7)(8).
This analysis will take a hard look at three specific aspects of the program model and question the social sciences theories from which those elements were derived. The model of the program is predicated on the assumption that, regardless of the situation or background of the student, he or she will be able to reason through a decision relating to drugs, alcohol, or violence. Many of the weaknesses of the earliest iterations of the program were a result of this intense focus on individual linear reasoned behavior. New curricula and lessons still fail to consider the environment in which the student is raised and the modeling that impacts their ultimate choice. Compounding this issue is the fundamental flaw of the program in addressing the normalizing of risky behavior in youth. While “peer pressure” is a focus of the program model, its interpretation within the model is dated and often not applicable to real-world circumstances. Finally, the program assumes that by injecting the students with a bolstered sense of self-esteem, environmental and situational influences will no longer be relevant. Unfortunately, youth and their social situations are much more complex than that.
I.               Criticism of the D.A.R.E. model
A.    Critique 1: What works for one should work for all
In its earliest versions, D.A.R.E. targeted fifth- and sixth-grade students. The goal was to intervene as early as possible to equip students as quickly as possible for any challenges they may face regarding drug or alcohol use, or violence. Even though the program was created for an extremely racially and socioeconomically diverse student population (9), the program takes a homogenous approach to all students, regardless of background.
Simply due to the sheer volume of students exposed to this program regularly, it is unrealistic to assume that all students receive the program in the same way. Based on the social learning theory, some behaviors have likely already been modeled and normalized in the home. While these are not the behaviors targeted by the program, the efficacy of the program is questionable if the students already have a mental construct of the impact of drugs and violence in the home. This mental construct can be healthy or dangerous, but the structure of the D.A.R.E. program does not account for either. The implicit conclusion that follows from the D.A.R.E. model is that any drug or alcohol use should be absolutely avoided. These rigid social norms will conflict with the modeling to which the student has already been exposed, and the desired effect of imparting a zero-tolerance mentality on the student is not just diluted, but also eventually lost (given the brief nature of the program).
In 2001, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a comprehensive set of “How To” guides around the topic of underage drinking prevention. In it, they mentioned that there are a number of risk factors that are reliable indicators of a student’s likelihood to abuse alcohol underage. These include the following: parental drug use, family structure and function problems, lack of commitment to school, anti-social behavior, and biological predisposition (10). With these in mind, the student who can most benefit from the message given by D.A.R.E. is least likely to engage with the program because she is not in school, nor would it be her first (or most formative) encounter with drug and alcohol use. Because of the program’s structure, however, these differential risks within the student population are masked and unattended. Even if family or friends have not exposed students to any sort of drug culture, they certainly encounter print, media, or Internet advertisements, and each student to varying degrees. Admittedly, singling out students who are at greater risk is not a favorable alternative, but the D.A.R.E. model presumes a homogeneity among students that does not, in fact, exist. If it did, the model would be singularly effective in any setting with any permutation of student representation, including those who’d already tried drugs or alcohol prior to participating in the program.
D.A.R.E.’s disregard for social and environmental pressures is indicative of its baseline belief in the capacity of the individual student to reasonably make a decision regardless of the situational constraints or past experiences. This stringent adherence to the individual level social science model (particularly the Theory of Planned Behavior) is effective in perpetuating the mission of the program but does not successfully equip students and youth with the tools necessary to confront complex situations involving friends and social pressures to conform.
B.    Critique 2: Fitting in is of no concern
In focusing so heavily on the individual agency of the student, the D.A.R.E. model does not effectively confront the realities of tenuous social situations, especially those encountered in groups. D.A.R.E. struggles to address peer pressure, but it does so in ways that neglect the very basic principles of herd behavior and social organization theory. Students are taught strategies and methods to, “Just say no!” but those strategies do not take into account the pressure of group behavior and perceived social roles.
The D.A.R.E curriculum prescribes very vague and general steps towards confronting peer pressure. In their model, they help students to identify characteristics of positive and healthy friendships and encourage them to build social and support networks buttressed by these relationships (3). The difficulty, however, is translating these skills to new environments with new and different potential friends and navigating potentially risky situations while in these novel surroundings.
The herd mentality theory asserts that individual choice is heavily, often imperceptibly, impacted by perceptions of behavior within the same peer group. In this scenario, a young underage student, most likely in high school or early college, attends a party where alcohol is being consumed. She leaves for the party armed with her fifth-grade D.A.R.E. training, but upon encountering a group of like individuals who are drinking, she is more likely to forget Officer Joe and instead join her peers. Thaler and Sunstein document behavioral changes like this not only in underage drinking, but in eating habits, voting patterns, and tax compliance (11). They point out that the notion of “acceptable” or “normal” behavior may, in fact, be based on false information, but the reality is that the group will behave in accordance with the prevailing assumptions. In this case, the prevailing assumption is, when you attend a party, you drink alcohol. What is at play here is an intense desire to conform. If the long-term consequences, however grave or benign, are not frighteningly obvious, conformity to immediate group behavior is inevitable and well documented. This is an insidious form of peer pressure for which the D.A.R.E. model does not account. Its earlier models were actually chastised for hyperbolizing the ever-present threat of drugs and alcohol, counter-intuitively normalizing a behavior that they were trying to stop.
Behaving in accordance with the peer group is not to say that all agency has been stripped from the individual. On the contrary, according to social organization theory, there is an implicit understanding within a group that each individual has a role to play and rules to play by to maintain the order of the social structure (12). As our student example from above is likely the newest member to the social hierarchy, her desire to conform is driven by deeply held socialization that differentiation is the enemy of assimilation. Coupled with her understanding of the rules, as they are manifest by the other, more senior, members of the group, she adheres to the norms established prior to her introduction. If she doesn’t, she runs the risk of being ostracized simply because other members of the group will no longer be able to play by the same set of rules in approaching her as they would if approaching anyone else.
D.A.R.E. scratches the surface of the pressure encountered by young adults on daily basis when confronted with risky decisions. It does not, however, incorporate the pressures of making decisions, as a new actor, within the confines of a group with either limited knowledge or well-earned knowledge. In that scenario, the actor is faced with the seemingly more important decision to either fit in or get out, despite her level self-confidence prior to entering the party.
C.   Critique 3: Self-efficacy will save us all, or at least the children
D.A.R.E. proponents vehemently believe in the Theory of Planned Behavior. The current model is built around the notion that improving a student’s sense of self-efficacy will ultimately empower the student to make the best decision in a high-risk situation, regardless of surroundings. If this is true, then all of the weaknesses noted above are immaterial because the more confident the student is, the less external social and environmental constructs and group behavior will matter. The fatal flaw of this model, however, is the assumption that an agent will always behave rationally.
A hallmark and critical success of the D.A.R.E. model is the focus on the self-esteem of the students. Noted in the same NHTSA guidelines, two additional warning signs for early drug and alcohol abuse are: low self-esteem and shy temperament at a young age (10). This programmatic strength is, unfortunately, only a proximal result of the model: the students reported feeling a bolstered sense of self only immediately after the program’s conclusion (2). If this is a method to counter the impact of the externalities of environment and group behavior, it is ineffective.
This focus appears to be the model’s participation in the transition from the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TRB). Past studies have tried to show that the TRB is a somewhat reliable predictor in the underage use of alcohol, as long as the most compelling factors (e.g. attitude toward alcohol, subjective norms, and prerequisite intention to use) align correctly (13). The researchers firmly asserted that as long as a young adult intended to use alcohol, and all of the other social and personal factors were met, he or she would, indeed use alcohol. Perhaps, then, if the students were taught to no longer intend to use alcohol, the risk would be eliminated.
Unfortunately, what the TRB does not take into account are changes to those critical factors that influence intention, while assuming a strictly linear movement from assessment to intent to action (14). Does this theory hold in the context of our party example from earlier? Does the new student have the time and opportunity to weigh her parents’ opinions, her siblings’ opinions, and her friends’ opinions in a moment after she is asked whether or not she would like a drink? Likely not. D.A.R.E.’s vision to empower the participating students to take greater stock in themselves and have faith in their own self-worth is absolutely essential for healthy development. However, as a means of addressing the rather amorphous concept of “self-efficacy” in an effort to impact a nice, but unrealistic, decision-making model, it is idealistic and poses no real lasting beneficial effect for the students.

II.             Proposed Improvement: Every 15 Minutes and Mariah’s Challenge
As vividly as I remember Officer Joe, I remember a day in May when I was in eighth grade. I had just come home from school and I noticed a newspaper article with my older brother’s photo. The headline read, “High School Junior Dies in Tragic Drunk Driving Accident.” The article talked about all of his achievements, how bereaved our family was, and what a shame it was to have lost him that way. I was confused. While I was reading the article, my brother came bounding in to the kitchen and grabbed a snack from the refrigerator. It was safe to say I had no idea what was going on. I came to find out that my brother was part of the Every 15 Minutes program at his high school.
Every 15 Minutes was developed around the statistic that every fifteen minutes, someone was killed in a drunk driving accident. While this statistic is now dated, and drunken driving fatalities have decreased by more than 50%, underage drinking and driving is still a reality. The CDC reported that in 2011, nearly one million high school aged youth drank and decided to drive (15). Clearly there is still a disconnect in the message being communicated by anti-drug programs and the actual behavior of teens and young adults.
The D.A.R.E. program, in an effort to be comprehensive, attempts to educate students on the dangers of multiple drugs and violent acts. Because the program is limited to 16 lessons, the practitioners cannot delve deeply into specifics about a given drug. These recommendations will focus on adolescent drinking and risky behavior associated with the decision to drink. Here we will critically look at two interventions that successfully use social science models to strengthen and brand community of non-alcohol users: Every 15 Minutes and the Mariah Challenge. An effective intervention targeting underage drinking and risky behavior will combine the key elements of both of these programs and will reach more students and resonate more deeply.
A.    Response to Critique 1: Creation of a new community through shared experience
The Every 15 Minutes campaign is a multi-faceted program incorporating various media to bring the reality of drunk driving directly to a student population through simulation. Students from the school will be selected to participate in a mock car collision, where some will play the victims (both injured and dead) and others will play the perpetrators. The simulated accident will take place on the school grounds, and the car (often a car that was actually involved in a drunk driving accident) will remain on the campus for a specified period of time. Those who have “died” will have obituaries written for them, and the school will hold a memorial assembly in those students’ honors. Parents will be notified of the students’ “deaths” and both students and parents will participate in a letter-writing exercise expressing their feelings surrounding the incident. After the “accident” and prior to the memorial assembly, students involved in the “accident” will be taken off campus to participate in a one evening retreat led by local law enforcement officers and counselors, while their classmates are instructed to reflect on the accident witnessed. Individual schools can choose to incorporate or subtract specific elements from the experience, but overall, the program is the same across schools (16).
The brilliance of this intervention lies in its novelty. No matter what the background or former experiences are of the students participating, the entire community together witnesses and works through a tragic accident. This group-level intervention incorporates multiple members of the community, and serves as a unifying event within the school populations’ collective history. If the school chooses to adopt this same intervention annually, the tragedy is not lost on those who have previously experienced it as different students are selected to participate each year. In contrast to the D.A.R.E. one-size-fits-all model, Every 15 Minutes simulates a difficult and tragic event around which an entire community rallies, effectively and lastingly reaching more students than the D.A.R.E. model structurally could.
Emotional and resonant in nature, Every 15 minutes also capitalizes on one recognized strength for addressing underage drinking through school programming: interaction (17). In this intervention, the students are the very center of the appeal and those who are targeted are the students as well. This dramatization exemplifies the central piece of the communications theory, as the victims of this simulation are those with whom fellow students can identify the most. While the simulation initially is not positive in nature, the reintroduction of the students back into the school population brings a sense of relief. After forcing the students to confront the realities of losing a classmate either to arrest, injury, or death by reckless decision making, that relief is much more profound and persistent over time.
B.    Response to Critique 2: Branding a community of non-users
A sense of relief is a feeling that Leo McCarthy has been trying to regain for the last five years. In 2007, his 14-year-old daughter was struck and killed by an underage drunk driver. While giving his daughter’s eulogy, McCarthy made a commitment to provide scholarships to high school students who pledged not to drink until they are 21, not to get into a car with someone who’d been drinking, and to give back to their communities. The pledge can be taken and signed online and as long as a student has not been convicted of any underage possession related offenses, the student is eligible to receive at $1,000 scholarship upon graduation (18).
Mariah’s Challenge is a grass-roots organization that is built on the fifth premise of alternative social science models, and creates a sense of premature ownership in the students who decide to take the pledge. By incentivizing students with the a potential scholarship, McCarthy is forcing the students to commit to a behavior based on an anticipated, but not guaranteed, pay-off without having to buy into the principles or dogmas that would otherwise lead to the desired behavior change. As the students get closer to graduation, the likelihood of winning the $1,000 scholarship is greater and greater and, based on the theories of ownership, the students are more likely to adhere to the pledge regardless of external pressures.
The intriguing facet about this intervention is that it also builds a branded community. In the way that the popular Livestrong campaign has merchandise and identifiable imagery, Mariah’s Challenge has a very recognizable logo and associated pink merchandise that is quickly and easily linked to the cause. In creating this brand, McCarthy has also created a community of inclusion for the students who choose to pledge. Regardless of where those students go, or with whom they interact, they will always be a part of Mariah’s Challenge. With that brand comes the promise of responsibility. Being armed with that is much more potent in the face of making difficult choices than being taught strategies to deal with one-on-one peer pressure, as the D.A.R.E. model would advocate. A member of this Challenge community will always be a member as long as he or she follows through on his or her pledge. Because it is reinforced in a comfortable setting at first, it is something that can transcend the pressure introduced by novel surroundings, new individuals, or a changed culture of acceptance.
C.   Response to Critique 3: Changing social norms
Both the Every 15 Minutes intervention and the Mariah Challenge are working to change the social norms surrounding underage drinking and driving by approaching the community most affected. It was not until recently that the D.A.R.E. program expanded to include high schools. By the time the graduates of the early D.A.R.E. elementary programs reached high school, the value of the program, if any gained at all, diminished. One could thus surmise that any lessons learned were either forgotten or drowned out by other social pressures, personal experiences, or environmental stressors.
By the time early graduates of the D.A.R.E. program reach high school, they are no longer in control of the social norms surrounding drinking culture. They are subject to them. Interventions like Every 15 Minutes and Mariah’s Challenge are forcing high school students to question two assumptions: that it is permissible to drink underage and that driving after drinking is not a serious offense. Every 15 Minutes combines the gruesome reality of drunk driving accidents with the profound emotional impact of losing a loved one to such a horrific incident. It makes tangible the otherwise easily written off threat that drinking and driving poses. Mariah’s Challenge, borne out of such a tragedy, mobilizes a community of committed students to take ownership of their futures. In doing so, they will first change their behaviors, later change their attitudes, and even further down the line, impact others to do the same. These collective changes serve to impact the culture of drinking in the high school environment by changing the subjective norms on the group level.
Changing the subjective norms, particularly those of immediate peers, surrounding the decision or intention to drink while underage would render the Theory of Planned Behavior moot. At the point where norms are changed, the issue of self-efficacy is no longer relevant. Three independent studies evaluating effective strategies for mitigating underage alcohol consumption have all recommended that a concerted effort be placed on changing the societal and community norms surrounding drinking (19)(17)(10). D.A.R.E.’s insistence on the use of individually focused social science models, particularly the TPB, just speaks to its own inability to adapt and evolve in time with the populations they are most trying to impact.
III.           Conclusion
The United States Surgeon General has issued a comprehensive, multi-tiered plan to address the persistent problem of underage drinking (20). She, a newly appointed official, taking such a bold step towards combating this issue is indication enough that current programming has not been working. One of the most ineffective of all of these currently existing is the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. It is built using individually focused social science theories and fails to take into consideration the pressures of group behaviors and environmental pressures into its model, and the only group suffering are those for whom it was initially intended.
In its wake, other interventions have arisen to address D.A.R.E.’s shortcomings. Programs like Every 15 Minutes and Mariah’s Challenge have built communities around shared experiences and have branded young students as ambassadors of responsibility, imbuing them with a sense of purpose that transcends peer and social pressures. A program with the brand power and sense of ownership of Mariah’s Challenge coupled with the powerful community building effect of Every 15 Minutes could elicit significant change among high school students and young adults. These programs are specialized to target very specific drug related behaviors, compared to D.A.R.E.’s comprehensive, all-encompassing approach, and create a profound and lasting impression on those who participate, adults and students alike.
CNN recently reported on a young woman who lost her father and older brother to a drunk driver in one evening. She has since become an advocate against the behavior and has told her story to multiple audiences. What she’s realized is that her story is much more powerful than any numbers or fact sheets, and she has committed to continue telling her story as long as it proves beneficial to anyone somewhere (21). I don’t remember Officer Joe’s real name, but I do remember my brother’s “obituary” and I won’t forget Mariah’s story
IV.           References
1.             D.A.R.E. [Internet]. The Official D.A.R.E. Web Site: Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Available from: http://www.dare.com/home/default.asp
2.             Ennett, Susan T., Rosenbaum, Dennis P., Flewelling, Robert L., Bieler, Gayle S., Ringwalt, Christopher L., Bailey, Susan L. Long-Term Evaluation of Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Addictive Behaviors. 1994;19(2):113–25.
3.             Objectives for D.A.R.E. School Curriculum [Internet]. 2012. Available from: http://www.dare.org/officers/Curriculum/Storyf98c.asp?N=Curriculum&M=10&S=12
4.             Rosenbaum, Dennis. Program Profile: Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) [Internet]. University of Illinois at Chicago; Available from: http://crimesolutions.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?ID=99
5.             Drug Abuse Resistance Education: The Effectiveness of DARE [Internet]. Alcohol Abuse Prevention: Some Serious Problems. Available from: http://www.alcoholfacts.org/DARE.html
6.             Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Results from the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Summary of National Findings [Internet]. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance. Available from: http://www.samhsa.gov/data/NSDUH/2k10NSDUH/2k10Results.htm#3.2
7.             Ringwalt, Christopher, Greene, Jody M., Ennett, Susan T., Iachan, Ronaldo, Clayton, Richard R., Leukefeld, Carl G. Past and Future Directions of the D.A.R.E. Program: An Evaluation Review [Internet]. Research Triangle Institute; 1994 Sep. Available from: https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/darerev.txt
8.             Shephard III, Edward M. The Economic Costs of D.A.R.E. Institute of Industrial Relations; 2001 Nov.
9.             Ethnic Distribution of Pupils by District, Los Angeles County [Internet]. Los Angeles, CA; 1997 2011. Available from: http://www.laalmanac.com/education/ed05_97.htm
10.             Prevention & Education [Internet]. U.S. Department of Transportation; National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; 2001 Mar. Report No.: 4. Available from: http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/alcohol/Community%20Guides%20HTML/Book4_Prevention.html#Current theories
11.             Thaler, Richard H., Sunstein, Cass R. Chapter 3: Following the Herd. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 2008. page 53–71.
12.             DeFleur, Melvin L., Ball-Rokeach, Sandra J. Chapter 8: Socialization and Theories of Indirect Influence. Theories of Mass Communication (5th edition). White Plains, NY: Longman, Inc.; 1989. page 202–27.
13.             Marcoux, B.C., Shope, J.T. Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior to adolescent use and misuse of alcohol. Health Education Research: Theory and Practice. 1997;12(3):323–31.
14.             Edberg, Mark. Chapter 4: Individual Health Behavior Theories. Essentials of Health Behavior: Social and Behavioral Theory in Public Health. Washington, D.C.: Jones and Bartlett Publishers; 2007. page 191–205.
15.             CDC Vital Signs - Teen Drinking and Driving [Internet]. [cited 2012 Dec 13]. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/TeenDrinkingAndDriving/index.html
16.             Every 15 Minutes - Someone dies from an Alcohol Related Collision [Internet]. [cited 2012 Dec 14]. Available from: http://www.every15minutes.com/aboutus/
17.             Komro, Kelli A., Toomey, Traci L. Strategies to Prevent Underage Drinking. NIAAA Spectrum [Internet]. Available from: http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh26-1/5-14.htm
18.             Grieving father offers teens money not to drink [Internet]. CNN. [cited 2012 Dec 14]. Available from: http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/14/us/cnnheroes-mccarthy-alcohol-challenge/index.html
19.             Holder, Harold D. Community Prevention of Young Adult Drinking and Associated Problems. NIAAA Spectrum.
20.             General S. Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking [Internet]. [cited 2012 Dec 14]. Available from: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/calls/underagedrinking/programs.html
21.             What sways teens not to drink, drive? Stories, not stats [Internet]. CNN. [cited 2012 Dec 13]. Available from: http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/10/us/cnnheroes-underage-drunken-driving/index.html

Labels: , ,

African American Gender Politics and the AIDS Epidemic: A Critique of Current HIV Intervention Strategy – Tali Schiller


The AIDS epidemic has been an unprecedented medical and public health issue for the last 30 years. Never before has a disease been so difficult to fight medically, socially, and in the public health sphere.  Our national policy has been more than up to the challenge to extend the required effort and financial backing – in fiscal year 2012 alone, the United States earmarked $21 billion for domestic research, prevention, and care and treatment of HIV (1).  Early awareness campaigns, such as SILENCE = DEATH and the Australian Grim Reaper commercial, were instrumental in teaching the public about HIV in the early days of the epidemic; efforts to maintain HIV in the public’s mind, and to educate them about how to prevent transmission, is still very much a priority.  This tremendous effort to prevent the transmission of AIDS through information and awareness is almost unmatched in the field of public health.  Why, then, has the HIV infection rate failed to drop?
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the domestic new infection rate has remained steady for the last 10 years, with about 50,000 new infections per year.  The African American population makes up a disproportionate percent of these new infections – though only 16% of the total population, African Americans accounted for 44% of new infections in 2009 (2).  Of this population, women of color are the most affected: in 2010, African American women made up two-thirds (64%) of new AIDS diagnoses and 57% of new HIV infections among the entire female population of the United States (2).  These rates show no sign of decreasing, despite millions of dollars spent on education and prevention messages broadcast on every medium. 
African American women are at an especially high risk for contracting HIV.  In 2010, black women were nearly 15 times more likely to be infected with HIV than white women, and nearly 1 in 30 black women will be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in her lifetime (3).  AIDS is the primary cause of death among African American women aged 25 to 34 (4).  Studies have shown that black women do not engage in riskier behavior than other women, but social dynamics place them at a higher risk.  Factors that increase black women’s risk of contracting HIV include differential access to health information, unequal access to healthcare and prevention materials, low self-esteem and a lack of empowerment, alcohol and drug use, poverty, sex-ratio imbalance, and a number of others (5).  These causes work synergistically to increase HIV transmission in the African American community.  The most important factor to consider is low perceived susceptibility to risk of infection – black women have a significantly lower perceived risk than women of other races, even those who participate in known high-risk behaviors (6). 
The CDC is fighting back against new HIV infections.  They have made a serious commitment to the African American community through a multi-pronged approach targeting different sections of the population.  The Act Against AIDS Leadership Initiative (AAALI) is a $16 million partnership between the CDC and leading organizations that represent the communities hit hardest by HIV.  The Expanded Testing Initiative is a $50 million per year, three-year expanded testing program to increase HIV testing in the African American community.  The CDC provides financial and technical support to community-based testing and prevention organizations, such as the WILLOW program, Sister to Sister, Nia, and Many Men, Many Voices.  The CDC has also created the current Act Against AIDS campaign, which delivers HIV testing information through the “Testing Makes Us Stronger” campaign for black men who have sex with men (MSM) and “Take Charge. Take the Test.” for the black heterosexual female population (7).  These financial commitments, and many more, are inspired by President Obama’s July 2010 National HIV/AIDS Strategy, new policy to address the problem of domestic HIV (8). 
The CDC’s response to steady HIV infection rates among the heterosexual African American female population was to develop the national campaign “Take Charge. Take the Test.” (TCTT), focused on timely testing as a vehicle to increase awareness of HIV status and therefore increase treatment. It combines aspects of several intervention models – Health Belief Model, Theory of Planned Behavior, and the Ecological Model – to create the theoretical framework.  The audience was also segmented; the CDC selected “single, African-American women aged 18–34 years, with some college education or less, who earned US$30,000 or less per year, resigned in certain zip codes of high prevalence for HIV/AIDS, and who were having unprotected sex with men”(9). TCTT is currently the largest and most comprehensive national response to the high incidence of HIV infections in the black female population, launched in ten major US cities where a significant percent of black women are affected.  This comprehensive effort to reach the black female community is larger than any that precedes it.  So why isn’t it working?   
I. Structural Barriers to Care
Considering the creation of an intervention for any disease requires contextualizing it within a socio-cultural framework: no disease exists in a vacuum, but HIV is more susceptible to societal factors than most.  Its stigmatized routes of transmission create a complicated environment in which to create effective public health messages.  Any such message must contend with a 30-year long association with homophobia, drug use, and sexual promiscuity.  In the African American community, these stigmatized activities are additional to the barriers of being black in America – poverty, segregation, and the historical fallout of a 300-year history with slavery.
Research has shown that black women and black gay men, the two populations of color with the highest incidence of HIV, have a similar number of sexual partners and use condoms as often as their white counterparts (10). Individual-level behaviors do not fully explain the racial disparity; in fact, a focus on behavior increases stigma by suggesting that individuals’ bad decisions are solely to blame for their poor health outcomes.  Instead, we must regard health inequalities within the socio-cultural context of race when considering HIV disparity, as with any other health problem that disproportionately affects communities of color.  Some factors that foster health inequalities include segregation in housing, education, employment, and health care, and racially skewed mass incarceration (10). 
Racial segregation by neighborhood increases HIV risk and prevalence. Residents of low-income, minority neighborhoods are also significantly less likely to have access to medical care or prevention methods (11).  Studies show that within a medical practice, black patients are treated differently than their white counterparts and that African Americans are likelier to live or seek care in areas where the healthcare quality is low for all patients (12). Even if they have access to healthcare, African Americans are less likely to have a regular source of primary care and therefore a trusted source of medical care (12).
Geographical segregation also makes communities of color less likely to have access to medical education – important for both seronegative individuals, to maintain their negative status, and seropositive individuals, to maintain their health and make sure transmission stops with them.  Timely diagnosis is an important factor when considering both HIV prognosis and spread in the population.  It is estimated that 1 out of 5 HIV+ individuals don’t know their status (2), affecting both their health and the health of any potential sexual partners; left untreated, HIV is more likely to develop into AIDS more quickly, and is more likely to be transmitted through unprotected sexual contact or intravenous drug use.  Lower rates of medical access, information, and quality have real and quantifiable consequences for the viral load in African American communities.  It is absolutely vital to place any intervention aimed at the African American community in general, and black women in particular, within a context of social determinants and social justice by moving beyond individual-level behavioral risk factors.   The downstream consequence of poor health outcomes should be recognized as the result of upstream factors such as the distribution of wealth.  It may also be worth noting that many health behavior change models depend on the use and spread of health information, in addition to raising self-efficacy, to inspire health change.  Due to the structural problems the African American community faces, behavior-changing information does not spread as widely in their community and therefore does not have the desired effect.
II. Gender Power Imbalance
In the United States, there are approximately 9 African American men for every 10 African American women (13); this creates a sex-ratio imbalance that is frequently cited as a leading cause of relationship insecurity and a fundamental reason for a gender power imbalance.  Since 83% of HIV transmission is through heterosexual contact (14), a dearth of acceptable sexual partners may lead women to choose partners with higher HIV risk.  Therefore, the factors that contribute to a woman’s position within a sexual network may place her at a higher risk of contracting HIV.
The ratio imbalance stems from a number of factors that remove African American males from the community, including higher mortality rates from disease, high violence rates, and high rates of incarceration (15).  Black men are overrepresented in prison systems.  More than 12% of men ages 20-29 are in jail or prison, and black men are more likely to be incarcerated than white men for the same crime (16).  This “sexual network” concept – that a group of individuals are connected directly or indirectly through their sexual contact – has deep ramifications for the African American community.  Many individuals choose sexual partners from within their neighborhoods, so even if they do not engage in high-risk behavior, the systematic segregation will also increase the risk of a high-risk partner (17).  This relatively small network of potential partners allows transmittable sexual diseases to spread more rapidly. In fact, the high viral load of certain inner city segregated communities has been compared to that of third-world countries (18). 
The theory of concurrent relationships may offer some important insights about the spread of HIV in the African American community.  Previously mentioned factors such as high incarceration and low sex-ratio lead to an especially high number of concurrent relationships, which are “multiple simultaneous sexual relationships or sexual relationships that overlap in time” (19). A study conducted by Morris et al. found that the rates of concurrency in African American male participants between the ages of 20 and 38 were 3.5 times higher than their White counterparts and 1.9 times higher than men of other racial backgrounds. In the same study, African American females had rates of concurrency at 2.1 times higher than their White counterparts and 4.1 times higher than women from other racial backgrounds (19). 
The consequences of these gender inequalities for HIV are clear. Expressed by Newsome et al: “African American women contending with the gender ratio imbalance that exists may relinquish negotiating power in their relationships, be more likely to settle for less desirable partners, accept infidelity, and agree to engage in unprotected sex” (15).
A black woman’s sexual relationships can be informed by concurrency, instability, and an imbalance of power.  These limiting factors often result in disassortative mixing by HIV risk, in which low-risk individuals partner with high-risk individuals due to lack of choice and therefore become high risk themselves.  This system of arrangements puts black women in high-risk situations not of their own making; individual-level risk behavior is meaningless when confronted with a system that puts women at higher risk through no fault of their own.  These gender-based configurations of power stymie traditional behavioral theories’ suggestion that knowledge of risk should result in an increase in self-protective behaviors.  The inherent imbalance of power in sexual relationships naturally leads to an inability to engage in self-protective behaviors – when your sexual options are limited, bargaining for monogamy and condom use is not an option. 
III. Spiritual Worldview and Self-Efficacy
A review of the current literature reveals that by far the most important thing to consider when discussing HIV transmission in black heterosexual females is that they have a much lower perceived risk of infection than comparable populations.  This belief holds the key to understanding their high HIV transmission rates.  Several factors to consider concerning its genesis are the high levels of spirituality and religiosity historically found in the African American community, the optimism and fatalism associated with spirituality, and the power of an entrenched worldview coping mechanism (20).
Spirituality and religiosity have been associated with the African American community as a coping mechanism for systematic oppression (21).  The community depends on religion in times of adversity, and prayer is an important tool in times of need.  African American women in particular report a high level of spirituality and religiosity and “heavily rely on a sense that everything is in the hands of a higher power” (20).  In times of special need or stress, all individuals are known to depend on extant coping mechanisms; this has been shown to be true in cases of extreme illness or disease, such as HIV (20).  However, certain aspects of this religious coping mechanism clash with medically approved prevention or maintenance behaviors recommended for the avoidance of HIV (22). Also, belief in a higher power is associated with higher levels of optimism. This suggests the concurrence of optimism bias, the theory that individuals have an optimistic underestimation of their vulnerability to negative consequences.  Optimism bias has been shown to be a contributing factor to the spread of HIV in the African American community (23).  This is perhaps related to African Americans viewing AIDS as only a gay white male disease (17) and therefore not viewing their risky behavior as risky enough to place them in danger of contracting HIV. 
Belief in a higher power also correlates with the principle of fatalism, or the amount of control people feel they have over their lives and future. Powe (1996) stated, “In addition to poverty, oppressive forces such as the long history of slavery, segregation, discrimination, substandard health care, and the subsequent perceptions of meaninglessness, hopelessness, and social despair provide the environment for the emergence of fatalism [among African Americans]” (24).  People with fatalistic attitudes have been shown to participate less frequently in preventive health behavior (20).  In a study on cancer risk, African Americans and women reported higher levels of fatalism than European Americans and men (25).  This study can easily be extrapolated to HIV; African American women feel as though they have little control over whether or not they contract HIV, and so do not feel as though they need to take precautionary measures, such as condom use or regular HIV testing.  Studies show that although black women are, in fact, in possession of a great deal of knowledge about HIV transmission and prevention (due to years of targeted education), the combined optimistic bias and fatalism inherent in their religion-based coping worldview leads to a lower personal perceived risk of HIV contraction.  This difference in known versus perceived risk may also avoid the cognitive dissonance inherent when pursuing behaviors one knows are risky but does not feel one has the power to avoid.
IV. Proposed Intervention
What lessons can be learned from this social and psychological profile?  First of all, the real source of many issues of public health can be found upstream.  The health problems of the African America community extend far beyond the prevalence of HIV, and the underlying cause is the systematic racism, poverty, and segregation endemic in the community. Interventions geared toward changing individual behaviors are useless without considering the socio-cultural framework that the individual is part of.  It’s impossible to understand a black woman without also understanding how her gender, history, value system, and sexual network affect her behavior, and how they interact to create seemingly irrational behavior patterns.
Second, accurate knowledge is the vital center of many health interventions, yet knowledge alone is not enough to warrant substantive change.  Many models address this disparity between knowledge and behavior through the addition of self-efficacy; raising an individual’s efficacy is the theoretical answer.  The problem with behavioral models is that black women already know they are at a higher risk of HIV and they know safe sex will protect them.  Educational interventions have taught them all about HIV.  The problem is, all of the other factors that create the worldview of a black American woman combine to decrease her perceived risk.   This occurs in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance inherent in participating in the risky behaviors known to be associated with HIV transmission while not feeling like she has the power to avoid these risky behaviors.  Behavioral interventions may teach safe sex and regular HIV testing, but women will continue to ignore them as long as that is the sacrifice they must make for the comfort of feeling protected by their heterosexual relationship.  But if the HIV incidence rates in the black female population are to be reversed and eventually stopped, the first goal must be prevention through engaging people’s existing worldviews on a societal scale. 
The components of the proposed intervention are as follows:
a.) There is no simple solution for the root cause of health inequality. The best way to address the important HIV implications of skewed incarceration statistics, wealth inequality, racism, and segregation is to eliminate these systematic inequalities.  This is easier said than done.  The Obama administration’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy and Implementation Plan makes great strides in this area by focusing not only on HIV testing and education, but by also addressing disparities as the root cause of high HIV transmission rates.  Some action items suggested by this plan include making HIV tests available to low-income populations, promoting a holistic approach to health, and adopting community-level approaches to reduce HIV infection rates (8).  Still, it’s clear that tackling the root causes of poor health outcomes will take generations, and may only be addressed on a national level by increasing social funding.
b.) Increasing HIV testing in the African American community, the primary goal of the CDC’s “Take Charge. Take the Test.” campaign, is an important way to improve health outcomes for HIV+ individuals, but the main message of any HIV intervention should be to avoid infection in the first place.  Decreasing HIV infection must be the primary message if HIV rates are ever to decrease, in any population.  If you test positive, it’s already too late.
c.) Black women are doubly disenfranchised by their race and their gender.  These factors combine to increase their powerlessness in many situations, including HIV prevention, because most prevention techniques depending on changing male behavior.  Women may not feel empowered to ask their partners to use a condom or ensure monogamy, two of the most important HIV prevention behaviors.  Any intervention aimed at the black female population would acknowledge that telling women to always use a male condom is problematic and instead turn to other options. An answer may be to create new or popularize existing prevention techniques in which the woman is empowered to practice safe sex on her own terms.  One such existing technique is the female condom, a tool that allows women to dictate their own safety.  Leaving women’s safety from sexually transmitted infections in men’s hands just because affordable, comfortable female-controlled safe sex tools are unavailable is ridiculous and untenable.
d.) The cognitive dissonance created by the struggle between safe sex knowledge and core values is a powerful psychological force.  Additional HIV transmission education is not the answer, and HIV testing comes too late.  The fatalism and optimism inherent in spirituality are too firmly entrenched within the African American worldview to be denied; the only response is to use cultural values of similar importance as a fundamental building block of HIV prevention campaigns.  One potentially powerful appeal may be to Family.  Familial relationships, and keeping the family together, would act as a significant existing cultural touchstone to draw from.  If HIV prevention were framed as a duty to protect family and community rather than just a duty to individual health it may resonate more with the target audience.  This reframing would align the goals of the target audience with the goals of health promotion, reducing cognitive dissonance and psychological reactance, and would allow women to act on their health knowledge. 
Although a significant and vital amount of resources have recently been dedicated to eliminating HIV transmission in the African American community and specifically in women, certain fatal social science errors permeate current health interventions.  Recognizing the flaws in individual-level, behavioral interventions when applied to racial minorities is the first step to creating socially sensitive and appropriate health campaigns.  Any health campaign created to address the problem of HIV prevalence in the African American female population should include elements of social funding, should focus on HIV prevention rather than testing as an outcome, should empower women to demand safe sex by popularizing a female-based safe sex tool, and should reframe staying HIV-free using the core value of Family or an equally powerful value for the African American community.  The sooner this is implemented, the sooner we will have an AIDS-free generation. 

REFERENCES

1.     U.S. Federal Funding for HIV/AIDS: The President’s FY 2012 Budget Request. (October 2011).
              http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/7029-07.pdf.
2.     The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the United States. (December 2012). http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/3029-13.pdf.
3.     Center for Disease Control and Prevention. HIV in the United States: An Overview. (March 2012). http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/factsheets/pdf/HIV_overview_2012.pdf.
4.     Center for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC - HIV Among Women.  (August 2011).
5.     Arya, Monisha, Heidi Behforouz, and Kasisomayajula Viswanath. (March  2009). African American Women and HIV/AIDS: A National Call for Targeted Health Communication Strategies to Address a Disparity.
6.     Nunn, et al. (March 2011). Low Perceived Risk and High HIV Prevalence Among a Predominantly African American Population Participating in Philadelphia’s Rapid HIV Testing Program. http://www.hivdent.org/_medical_/2011/Nunn_2011_AIDS_Pt_Care_STD_Low_perceived_risk_and_high_HIV1.pdf.
7.     Center for Disease Control and Prevention . HIV/AIDS and African Americans | Topics | CDC HIV/AIDS. (February 27, 2012).
            http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/aa/.
8.     NATIONAL HIV/AIDS STRATEGY (July 2010).  Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/nhas-implementation.pdf.
9.     Fraze, J. ., Uhrig, J. D., Davis, K. C., Taylor, M. K., & Lee, N. R. (September 2009). Applying core principles to the design and evaluation of the “Take Charge. Take the Test” campaign: What worked and lessons learned. http://ezproxy.bu.edu/login?url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350609002352
10. Robinson, Russell, and Aisha Moodie-Mills. (July 2012). HIV/AIDS Inequality: Structural Barriers to Prevention, Treatment, and Care in Communities of Color | Center for American Progress. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/report/2012/07/27/11834/hivaids-inequality-structural-barriers-to-prevention-treatment-and-care-in-communities-of-color/.
11. Elimination of Health Disparities: National Prevention Strategy. Retrieved from http://www.healthcare.gov/prevention/nphpphc/strategy/health-disparities.pdf.
12. The National Bureau of Economics Research. GEOGRAPHY AND RACIAL HEALTH DISPARITIES.  (February 2003). http://www.centerforurbanstudies.com/documents/electronic_library/cuba/healthcare/geography_and_racial_disparities.pdf.
13. U.S. Census Bureau. (2000). Male-female ratio by race alone or in combination and Hispanic or Latino origin for the United States: 2000 (PHC-T-11). http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/briefs/phc-t11/index.html
14. Chen, N., Meyer, J., & Springer, S. (February 2011). Advances in the prevention of heterosexual transmission of HIV/AIDS among women in the United States. http://www.pagepress.org/journals/index.php/idr/article/view/idr.2011.e6/2966
15. Newsome, V., & Airhihenbuwa, C. (October 2012). Gender Ratio Imbalance Effects on HIV Risk Behaviors in African American Women. http://ezproxy.bu.edu/login?url=http://hpp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/10/04/1524839912460869.long
16. The Sentencing Project. Comparative International Rates of Incarceration: An Examination of Causes and Trends. (June 2003). http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_comparative_intl.pdf.
17. Aral, S., Adimora, A., & Fenton, Kevin. (August 2008). Understanding and responding to disparities in HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in African Americans. http://ezproxy.bu.edu/login?url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673608611186
18. Gallo, R. (2008, November 16). Inner Cities Need an AIDS Relief Program. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/11/14/AR2008111403132.html
19. Morris M., Kurth A. E., Hamilton D. T., Moody J., Wakefield S. (2009). Concurrent partnerships and HIV prevalence disparities by race: Linking science and public health practice. American Journal of Public Health, 99, 1023-1031.
20. Younge, Sinead. (2008). Risk Revisited: The Perception of HIV Risk in a Community Sample of Low-Income African American Women. http://ezproxy.bu.edu/login?url=http://jbp.sagepub.com/content/36/1/49.full.pdf+html.
21. Jagers, R. J. (2000). Work notes on communalism. African American Research Perspectives, 6(1), 69-78.
22. Franklin, M. D., Schlundt, D. G., McClellan, L. H., Kinebrew, T., Sheats, J., Belue, R., et al. (2007). Religious fatalism and its association with health behaviors and outcomes. American Journal of Health Behavior, 31, 563-572.
23. Kalichman, S. C., & Cain, D. (2005). Perceptions of local HIV/AIDS prevalence and risks for HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections: Preliminary study of intuitive epi- demiology. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 29, 100-105.
24. Powe, Barbara. (1996). Cancer Fatalism Among African-americans: A Review of the Literature. http://ezproxy.bu.edu/login?url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029655496800200.
25. Conrad, M., Brown, P., & Conrad, M. (1996). Fatalism and breast cancer in Black women. Annals of Internal Medicine, 125, 941-942.

Labels: , , ,