UAB School of Nursing assistant professor Comfort Enah, Ph.D., has been awarded a three-year, $271,031 grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research for a project titled “Development of an HIV Prevention Game for African American Rural Adolescents.”
African Americans in the rural Deep South continue to experience a disproportionate increase in new HIV/AIDS infections, despite the availability of effective HIV prevention interventions. In particular, the number of new cases of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases among adolescents is rapidly increasing in this region, and there are few interventions directed toward young adolescents, Enah notes.
The goal of Enah’s project is to develop a prototype for an individually tailored, electronic HIV prevention adventure game for African-American youths from 12 to 14 years old living in rural areas. The game will be designed to help this population improve decision-making and learn behavioral strategies that can assist them with avoiding sexual risk behaviors.