Healthy Oakland Teens (HOT)
NOTE: The HOT Project ended in 1995. For a list of more recent, effective school-based sexuality/HIV education programs, please see:
- CDC's Best Evidence Interventions
- CDC's DEBI programs for youth: CLEAR, Focus on Youth, Street Smart, TLC
The Center for AIDS Prevention Studies began providing innovative HIV prevention education in Oakland, CA in 1989. The Healthy Oakland Teens Project (HOT) began in the fall of 1992 at an urban, ethnically diverse junior high school. The project's goal was to reduce adolescents' risk for HIV infection by using peer role models to advocate for responsible decision making, healthy values and norms, and improved communication skills. The HOT program was very successful.
After extensive training, the ninth grade peer helpers delivered weekly interactive sessions in seventh-grade science classes, focusing on values, decision-making, communication, and prevention skills. The program trained 30 ninth grade peer helpers who in turn taught 300 seventh graders each year.
Each semester the peers designed their own group logo which was printed on T-shirts worn enthusiastically by the peer helpers. During eighth grade, the students received two "booster" sessions - a reminder of what they learned in seventh grade. HIV-positive young people visited each eighth-grade classroom helping the students realize that HIV infection does happen to teenagers. The eighth-graders also saw a theater presentation, Secrets, sponsored by the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, which tells the story of a high school student who becomes infected with HIV.
Curriculum
NOTE: The HOT Project ended in 1995. For a list of more recent, effective school-based sexuality/HIV education programs, please see:
- CDC's Best Evidence Interventions
- CDC's DEBI programs for youth:: CLEAR, Focus on Youth, Street Smart, TLC
Staff
For more information e-mail: Maria Ekstrand Project Director Center for AIDS Prevention Studies [email protected]