Saving our children: strategies to empower African-American adolescents to reduce their risk for HIV infection.

Adolescence is normally a healthy period of life. For some young people it is a period of experimentation with risky behavior. For others, it marks the development of habitual risk behaviors that persist into adulthood. Of special concern is adolescent involvement with sexual behaviors that increase the risk of infection with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Nurses who work with adolescents are seeing an increase in STDs, including HIV infection occurring disproportionately among African-American adolescents. Although the use of condoms can reduce the risk of these sexually transmitted diseases, most sexually active adolescents do not consistently use condoms. This paper will discuss the scope of the problem of STDs, especially HIV infection among African-American adolescents. It will describe the Theory of Planned Behavior as a framework for designing interventions to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV and other STDs. Finally, it will provide strategies for nurses to intervene by empowering African-American adolescents to reduce their risk for sexually transmitted HIV infection.