Family Empowerment: Adapting Successful Disclosure Strategies for HIV+ Parents

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One million adults in the US and 42 million families globally must decide if, to whom, when, and how to disclose their HIV+ serostatus. Often, disclosure of serostatus has a long-term negative impact on children and extended family members of HIV+ parents; this team has developed a coping-skills intervention that can positively impact the adjustment over 6 years of HIV+ parents, their children, and grandchildren. The intervention has been delivered in a small group setting over multiple sessions. However, most treatment settings do not serve enough HIV+ parents to form ongoing groups; attendance at sessions is a major barrier for a small group delivery format; and tailoring the delivery to ethnic and gender subgroups is difficult in a small group setting. The goal of this STTR project is to adapt an evidence-based intervention for HIV+ parents on disclosure of serostatus that can be delivered in a stand alone self-help format, not a small group and will allow for broad dissemination of the intervention in multiple settings and through multiple vehicles (agencies, direct mail, physicians, pharmacies and HIV+ parents). In Phase I we will examine the feasibility of a new format for our existing evidence-based disclosure intervention, Project TALK, by: (a) adapting existing scripts and session activities to be delivered in a different format (from small group to stand alone self-help packet); (b) pilot testing the acceptability and the market potential of a sample session with donor agencies, community organizations, physicians, pharmacists, HIV testing sites and HIV+ parents; and (c) finalizing plans to produce a prototype and evaluate the intervention's effect on disclosure and positive adjustment of parent's living with HIV and their children in a field trial in Phase II. To conduct this work, Science2Market [S2M], a for-profit company, has joined with UCLA researchers to utilize the expertise of a university-based research team with experts in community care and dissemination. If the sample session is highly acceptable to the potential market and the price/unit is feasible for dissemination we will proceed to Phase II application to examine the efficacy of the new intervention.