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This fourteen-session program for high school students emphasizes behavioral
skill development. During the first several classes, students study
transmission and prevention of HIV, teen vulnerability to the virus, and
determinants of risky behaviors. In the second half of the program, students
learn and repeatedly practice skills to help them identify, manage, avoid, and
leave risky situations. The final sessions help students integrate what they
have learned in the program into their own lives. The program encourages teens
to delay having intercourse, or for those youth who do become sexually active,
to be sexually monogamous, avoid drugs and alcohol that could cloud one's
judgment during intercourse, practice safer sex, get tested for HIV if they
believe they are at risk, and avoid sharing needles. A field study of the
curriculum was conducted in seventeen Colorado high schools serving rural,
suburban, and urban populations. In a six month follow-up assessment comparing
Get Real about AIDS® participants with a comparison group of peers,
sexually-active program participants had fewer sexual partners, purchased and
used condoms more frequently, intended to engage in sex less frequently and
planned to use condoms when they did. The evaluation data did not record,
however, a delay in the onset of sexual activity, a decrease the frequency of
sexual activity or a reduction in drug and alcohol use prior to sex.
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