Hugging my uncle: The impact of a parent training on children's comfort interacting with persons living with HIV

Abstract

Objective: HIV-related stigma affects not only persons living with HIV (PLwHIV) but also their communities and families including children. This study aimed to determine whether an interactive training administered to community parents significantly increases their children's reported comfort interacting with PLwHIV. Methods: A randomized clinical trial with random-quota dwelling unit sampling and a random invitation to treatment had 238 parent and 238 child participants. Results: For children of trained parents, significant increases in comfort were obtained, baseline to 6-month follow-up, on 14 of 22 reported daily activities with PLwHIV. For children who recently interacted with a person living with HIV, this comfort predicted the number of recent activities, even after controlling for closeness to the person living with HIV and for the number of persons with HIV known, living or deceased. Conclusions: Training parents to be HIV health educators of their children significantly impacts youth and shows promise for reducing HIV-related stigma and social isolation. © The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Pediatric Psychology. All rights reserved.