Williams, Joseph P. (June 21, 2019) Barber-Backed Sex Talks to Curb HIV. U.S. News and World Report. Available at https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2019-06-21/barber-backed-sex-talks-a-tool-to-curb-hiv-study-suggests
The intervention is a primary intervention on educating an at risk population to prevent them from getting HIV by teaching them about safe sex practices through the Brothers talking with brothers program which has barbers talking about health issues with their clients. Since it can be awkward for people especially men to talk about safe sex with others Tracey Wilson, one of the lead authors on the study, helped come up with the idea of going into barbershops and having either the barber themselves do the talking or a health expert sit there and talk while the barber gives the client a cut. They decided this would be an effective venue for African American males as it is a place they frequent often and feel very relaxed during. The effectiveness was tested in fifty barbershops in the Brooklyn area and by their out comes they saw a little bit of success they feel they can build upon in the future. A group received a talk about the risks of unprotected sex in relation to HIV while a control group received a talk about prostate cancer. After 6 months they asked the groups about their sexual partners and their use of prophylactics. Reportedly of the 320 members of the HIV group 64% reported that they had not had any vaginal or anal sex without a condom in the past ninety days while comparatively the control group reported in at a 54% rate out of the 200 members. While I can see why they thought it was a success in comparing it with a control group they don’t offer information about the efforts to reduce confounding or alternate reasons for the improvement in condom use. I believe for me to trust the experiment a little bit more I would need the groups to know the originating information, i.e. the percentages of those who received either talk that always or mostly used condoms. If the starting percentages were 60% then I would feel like it was less effective than if the starting percentages were 30% or 40%.
I think that this intervention maybe likely to catch on especially in African American communities where going to the barbershop is a more meaningful time than some other communities where the men do not really have a relationship with their hair dresser. However the fact that for the African American male community it is in a place they feel more comfortable at, probably have a relationship with their barber that has fostered trust of the barber, and the inability to just walk away makes it ideal to offer health talks, especially to a group that is often disenfranchised and may not have as much access to resources on their own.
This is actually another type of startegy to prevent teen pregnancy as one of the factors that contributes to it is access to sex education from both a school setting and a personal setting from a parent. A lot of times, parents don’t educate their kids enough about sex to prevent any stds or msigivings-probably because they want them to practice abstinence only or the like, but a lot of times that fails, and those who fail it don’t have the proper knowledge to use contraceptives.