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Member Information
John Jemmott, PhD
Professor, Communication
Annenberg School for Communication
Office Phone: 215-573-9500
Office Fax: 215-573-9303
Email: jjemmott@asc.upenn.edu
Website(s):
Education:
Keywords: HIV intervention, health psychology
Research and/or Clinical Interests:
AIDS awareness and prevention in inner city youth.
Summary:
Professor John B. Jemmott, a specialist in health psychology, collaborates with other psychologists and health professionals (including his wife, Loretta Sweet Jemmott, a Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania ) who are working to stem the rapid spread of HIV among urban adolescents. Inner-city youth represent an important, yet largely neglected, population in the war against AIDS, for almost half of them have had sex by age 13. Jemmott and his collaborators have been working for nine years to increase AIDS awareness among such adolescents, and their efforts have now begun to achieve national attention. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has identified as effective a curriculum based on Jemmott's research. "Be Proud! Be Responsible!" is built around workshops, or "interventions," designed by Jemmott to teach adolescents about AIDS and how to avoid contracting it. In a series of studies, Jemmott has focused on black adolescents in the inner cities of Philadelphia and of Trenton , New Brunswick , and Newark , New Jersey . 28 percent of AIDS patients are African-Americans, even though this group represents only 12 percent of the U.S. population. In developing the program, Jemmott used practical information collected from focus groups, along with theories of social cognition and planned behavior. The members of the focus groups were inner-city adolescents. They talked about their beliefs about HIV and AIDS, their sexual behaviors, why they engaged in sex, and their feelings about safer sex. (The program encourages students to practice "safe" sex - abstinence - but recognizes that they are more likely to engage in "safer" sex, the knowledgeable and habitual use of condoms.) A typical intervention includes a group of six to eight adolescents and one adult facilitator. They are together for an average of five hours, so it's important that the activities be fun as well as educational. Videos, rap sessions, and AIDS-knowledge games help keep the kids engaged. In an activity called AIDS basketball, they divide into teams and score points for correct answers to questions about AIDS. Jemmott hopes such efforts will influence attitudes, which in turn will change behavior. Adolescents, he notes, are particularly at risk because most of them believe they are invulnerable. While interventions discuss abstinence as the most effective way to prevent AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, they also deal openly with condoms, including lessons on how to use them effectively. Although the lessons are aimed equally at boys and girls, it is the latter who usually must assume the initiative. Interventions also teach self-confidence. A video that is part of the "Be Proud! Be Responsible!" curriculum features a scene from one of Jemmott's interventions, in which a girl insists to her unwilling companion that they use a condom that evening when they have sex. When her skeptical partner asks her why she would insist on such an "unnatural thing," she replies, "Because I said so. I respect myself more than to let you get me pregnant or catch a disease. . . . I have a life ahead of me." For a young African-American woman, confidence in herself and the ability to marshal a convincing argument to a partner are critical. Says Jemmott, "Slightly more than 50 percent of women with AIDS are African-American women. And since babies are often infected by the mother, it's roughly the same percentage for pediatric cases." Jemmott and his collaborators are looking forward to the implementation of "Be Proud! Be Responsible" on a national scale. Their research shows that in the four cities where the pilot program has been in effect, it has achieved a measure of success. In follow-up studies, participants knew more about AIDS, had more positive attitudes toward safer sex, and reported engaging in fewer risky sexual behaviors than did nonparticipants.
Representative Publications:
None available.
