Empowering parents for human immunodeficiency virus prevention: Health and sex education at home

Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Empowering parents for human immunodeficiency virus prevention: Health and sex education at home
 
Creator Edwards, Taygen Mkwanazi, Ntombizodumo Mitchell, Joanie Bland, Ruth M. Rochat, Tamsen J.
 
Subject Public Health; Psychology health education; sex education; intervention materials; HIV prevention; HIV-uninfected children; parent–child communication
Description Background: Improving health literacy amongst human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive mothers could strengthen child and adolescent HIV prevention. The Amagugu intervention included health literacy materials to strengthen maternal communication and has demonstrated success in low-resource HIV-endemic settings.Objectives: Our aims were to (1) evaluate whether Amagugu materials improved health literacy leading to changes in parental behaviour towards communicating on topics such as HIV, health behaviours and sex education, and (2) explore what additional information and materials mothers would find helpful.Method: The Amagugu evaluation included 281 HIV-positive mothers and their HIV-uninfected children (6–10 years). Process evaluation data from exit interviews were analysed using content analysis and logistic regression techniques.Results: Of 281 mothers, 276 (98.0%) requested more educational storybooks: 99 (35.2%) on moral development/future aspirations, 92 (32.7%) on general health, safety and health promotion, and 67 (23.8%) on HIV and disease management. Compared to baseline, mothers reported that the materials increased discussion on the risks of bullying from friends (150; 53.4%), teacher problems (142; 50.5%), physical abuse (147; 52.3%) and sexual abuse (126; 44.8%). Most mothers used the ‘HIV Body Map’ for health (274; 97.5%) and sex education (267; 95.0%). The use of a low-cost doll was reported to enhance mother–child communication by increasing mother–child play (264; 94.3%) and maternal attentiveness to the child’s feelings (262; 93.6%).Conclusion: Parent-led health education in the home seems feasible, acceptable and effective and should be capitalised on in HIV prevention strategies. Further testing in controlled studies is recommended.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Canadian International Development Agency
Date 2020-06-29
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Uncontrolled pre-post-evaluation study
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajhivmed.v21i1.970
 
Source Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine; Vol 21, No 1 (2020); 13 pages 2078-6751 1608-9693
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajhivmed.org.za/index.php/hivmed/article/view/970/1871 https://sajhivmed.org.za/index.php/hivmed/article/view/970/1870 https://sajhivmed.org.za/index.php/hivmed/article/view/970/1872 https://sajhivmed.org.za/index.php/hivmed/article/view/970/1869
 
Coverage South Africa Childhood; Parenthood Mothers; Children; six to 10 years; Black African
Rights Copyright (c) 2020 Taygen Edwards, Ntombizodumo Mkwanazi, Joanie Mitchell, Ruth M. Bland, Tamsen J. Rochat https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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