Reducing AIDS risk among inner-city women: a review of the Collectivist Empowerment AIDS Prevention (CE-AP) Program

We discuss the process underlying our HIV-prevention project for young inner-city women. Health interventions are almost uniformly based on individualistic models of health and behavior. In contrast, AIDS and AIDS prevention, by their very social nature, may require more collectivist principles of disease, health, and intervention. We conducted a behavioral intervention, the Collectivist Empowerment AIDS Prevention (CE-AP) Program, with young, inner-city women to deal with this critical health issue. Our primary intervention goal was to promote women's sense of owning and making healthy choices about their bodies. We attempted to accomplish this by emphasizing the concepts of empowerment, collectivism (as opposed to individualism), and culturally sensitive skill building. Collectivism is emphasized to encourage women to involve others in their behavioral health decisions and to gain power through social joining and coalition building. A woman's behavioral decisions affect many others in her life. Thus, involving others in decision making emphasizes the connection between an individual's actions and their impact on interpersonal relationships. CE-AP was found to be effective in changing safer-sex behavior and we review our findings and future directions.