Kevin Malotte
“Safe in the City,” an HIV/AIDS intervention program designed and evaluated by a research group that included a professor at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), has been chosen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for inclusion in The 2008 Compendium of Evidence-based HIV Prevention Interventions.
CDC, the government’s lead agency for HIV prevention in the United States, analyzes program efficacy and compiles updates to The Compendium annually. To be included, programs must be scientifically proven to reduce HIV or STD-related risk behaviors or promote safer behaviors.
The 2008 Compendium is a single source of information that informs state and local HIV-prevention programs about what works for preventing HIV infections and includes a total of 57 interventions. “Safe in the City” was one of just eight interventions added to the list this year.
“We’re very excited that the ‘Safe in the City’ project was included in this issue of The Compendium. Interventions listed in this publication are the ones the CDC will support when they provide funding to local health departments, community-based organizations and other nonprofit groups,” said Kevin Malotte, Archstone Endowned Chair and director of the CSULB Center for Health Care Innovation. Malotte served as the principal investigator for the Long Beach site during the evaluation study.
“Already, ‘Safe in the City’ has been requested by more than 1,200 sites to be used in their waiting rooms,” he added. “So, it is probably the most widely distributed of the eight evidence-based interventions that were added to the compendium this year.”
“Safe in the City” is a single-session, video-based intervention project for diverse STD (sexually transmitted diseases) clinic patients. It involves the presentation of a 23-minute STD/HIV prevention video to patients in a clinic waiting room. The video contains key prevention messages aimed at increasing knowledge and perception of STD/HIV risk, promoting positive attitudes toward condom use and building self-efficacy and skills to facilitate partner treatment, safer sex and the acquisition, negotiation and use of condoms.
The CDC estimated that 56,300 new HIV infections occurred in 2006, according to Richard Wolitski, the CDC’s acting director for the Division of HIV and AIDS Prevention. Malotte noted that Wolitski earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Cal State Long Beach.
“As our nation continues to address the evolution of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, we are constantly reminded of the burden this epidemic places on individuals and communities,” Wolitski said. “Preventing HIV infections from occurring in the first place is the only answer to curbing the burden over the long term. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is dedicated to researching, informing, funding, training, monitoring, and evaluating HIV prevention efforts.
“We know the uphill battle that HIV prevention faces at this point in the epidemic, given the increasing number of people living with HIV,” Wolitski said. “We also know that our prevention partners include extraordinarily dedicated state and local health departments, community-based organizations, schools and academic institutions and tens of thousands of researchers, public health workers and volunteers who are on the front lines, day in and day out, doing the hard work of prevention.”
Malotte noted that of the 57 interventions listed in The 2008 Compendium, CSULB has been involved with five of them as investigators, including the projects RESPECT Brief Counseling, RESPECT Brief Counseling plus Booster, RESPECT Enhanced Counseling and Safety Counts. He also said that RESPECT and RESPECT-type counseling is used all over the U.S. by a variety of different groups.
“This speaks to the history of Cal State Long Beach researchers and their involvement in this important public health area,” Malotte said. “I don’t believe any other university in the United States has been involved in as many interventions that have been chosen for this Compendium publication.”
