Women to Women HIV Prevention Program

TCCM employs a peer educator model that uses a combination of motivational, educational, and skills building elements to both instruct and promote continued behavior change. The W2W Program has in the past implemented both group multi-sessions (a two-session, four-hour intervention) and a ten-week support group intervention. In 2005, W2W will implement the SISTA Project (Sisters Informing Sisters About Topics on AIDS), which also uses social skills training among high risk African American women. The SISTA Project is a natural transition for the W2W Program, in that it employs the already successful peer-based model and adds a greater degree of structure, more time for learning and practicing prevention skills, and additional focus on developing ethnic and gender pride.

Using a two hour, five session model (plus a follow-up booster session), a small group of 10-12 women with face-to-face sharing of information and skills has proven to be an effective intervention strategy with hard-to-reach populations. Women in this target population are more willing to listen and share when there is trust and a basis of similar experience and risk behavior among the group members. The messages include harm reduction strategies that are non-judgmental. The perception that peers encourage the required behavioral changes is one of eight factors needed for a person to lower his or her HIV risk behaviors (from the National Commission on AIDS, cited in the Wisconsin Comprehensive HIV Prevention Plan 2002).
A Center for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) Diffusion of Effective Behavioral Intervention (DEBI) model program, SISTA applies both the Social Cognitive Theory and the Theory of Gender and Power. These theories applied to HIV prevention focus on giving women information, as well as social and behavioral skills that can be applied to risk-reduction strategies, and examine gender-based power differences in the participants, relationships resulting in women committing to risk-reduction strategies within their heterosexual partnerships. Some of the content/messages include:

• HIV/AIDS is preventable.
• Identification of unsafe behaviors (and triggers) and safer behaviors.
• Harm reduction: trying to limit unprotected sex will reduce risk, the correct use of a condom can prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS.
• How to negotiate safe sex in a non-confrontational manner so that violence in the home is not escalated.
• Behavior of primary sexual partner isn’t always known or understood, so this can place the target population at increased risk of HIV transmission.
• It is important to involve partners in safer sex.
• There are cultural and gender triggers that may make it challenging for women to negotiate safer sex.
• There is value in utilizing cultural and gender appropriate materials to acknowledge pride, enhance self worth in being an African American woman.

Community Impact

Mission: The Women to Women HIV Prevention Program of The Counseling Center of Milwaukee (TCCM) is a prevention education program aimed at decreasing the spread of HIV infection in difficult-to-reach and high-risk populations. The success in the program lies largely in its ability to recruit and train women from the communities the program serves. The facilitators, mostly African American women, many of whom were once at-risk themselves, undergo comprehensive training that prepares them to provide HIV prevention presentations to the targeted population. The program has reached at-risk women in ways that few other resources can through its peer facilitator model and its focus on hosting presentations at sites throughout the community where the targeted population lives and seeks services. Presentations are given at homeless shelters, detox centers, jails, housing projects, community centers, as well as in people’s own homes.

Impact: Every year, the Women to Women Program reaches out to more and more women at-risk. These prevention programs provide a crucial service in Milwaukee County. The fastest-growing HIV-positive population in the United States consists of women of color. Of newly HIV-infected women, approximately 64% are African American, 17% are Latinas, and 17% are white. African American women represent only 14% of the U.S. female population, but account for 58% of cumulative AIDS cases among women (CDC Basic Statistics, 2001). In 2002 alone, the Women to Women Program reached out to 1,857 women, 95% of these women were women of color. Of these women:

• 1,842 women learned how to use a condom.
• 1,824 women learned what body fluids transmit HIV/AIDS.
• 1,819 women learned the definition of HIV and AIDS.
• 1,807 women learned a person may have HIV/AIDS and not know it.
• 1,802 women learned that, after being infected, one needs to wait six months to be tested in order for the results to be 98% correct.
• 1,791 women learned to negotiate desire to have safe sex in a non-confrontational way.
• 1,786 women learned which risky behaviors transmit HIV/AIDS.
• 1,788 women learned how to decrease chances of acquiring HIV/AIDS.
• 1,708 women were able to identify at least one new community resource they became aware of due to the group.

TCCM has lead our community in serving those, especially youth who face sexual abuse, homelessness and mental illness.

For more information on our individual services click one of the images in the menu below or contact us at info@tccmilw.org