Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective!
Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! is an 8-module adaptation of the Be Proud! Be Responsible! program targeting adolescent mothers and pregnant girls. The curriculum emphasizes the role of maternal protectiveness in motivating adolescents to make healthy sexual decisions and decrease risky sexual behavior. It also encourages adolescents to take on sexual responsibility and accountability and increases awareness of the effects of HIV/AIDS on inner-city communities and their children.
| Category | Program Features |
|---|---|
| Setting | Community based |
| Program Length | 8 hours/year | 1 year 8 sessions total |
| Age Group | Ages 14–18 |
| Look Inside |
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Overview | Description | Population | Authors
Overview
Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! is an 8-module adaptation of the Be Proud! Be Responsible! program targeting adolescent mothers and pregnant girls. The curriculum emphasizes the role of maternal protectiveness in motivating adolescents to make healthy sexual decisions and decrease risky sexual behavior. It also encourages adolescents to take on sexual responsibility and accountability and increases awareness of the effects of HIV/AIDS on inner-city communities and their children.
Description
To change behavior, adolescents need not only information and a perception of personal vulnerability, but also the skills and the confidence in their ability to act safely.
The goals of the program are to:
- Affect knowledge, beliefs, and intentions related to condom use and sexual behaviors such as initiation and frequency of intercourse.
- Address the impact of HIV on pregnant women and their children, the prevention of disease during pregnancy and the postpartum period, and special concerns of young mothers.
- Provide pregnant and parenting adolescent women with the knowledge, motivation and skills necessary to change their behaviors in ways that will reduce their risk of contracting STDs, HIV, and unplanned or repeat pregnancies.
Population Served & Setting
The curriculum was designed to be used with small groups of adolescent mothers and pregnant girls. It can be implemented in various community settings, including youth-serving agencies.
About the Authors
Deborah Koniak-Griffin, RN, EdD, FAAN, is a professor and Audrienne H. Moseley Endowed Chair in Women’s Health Research, and director of the Center for Vulnerable Populations Research at the School of Nursing, University of California at Los Angeles, and a nurse-practitioner in women’s health. Her research, spanning more than 2 decades, is focused on understanding risk behaviors in adolescents, particularly pregnant and parenting teens, and designing interventions to promote their health. She has worked extensively with adolescents from Latino and African American backgrounds.
Her numerous publications address issues in maternal-child health, adolescent pregnancy, and HIV prevention. She has been the principal investigator on three large adolescent pregnancy studies funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research. Dr. Koniak-Griffin's extensive speaking experience includes government and other invitational presentations, clinical and research papers and visiting professorships.
Loretta Sweet Jemmott, PhD, RN, FAAN, is one of the nation’s foremost researchers in the field of HIV/AIDS, STD and pregnancy prevention, with a consistent track record of developing evidence-based sexual risk-reduction interventions. As an expert in health promotion research, she has led the nation in understanding the psychological determinants for reducing risk-related behaviors and how best to facilitate and promote positive changes in health behaviors. Her research is devoted to designing and evaluating theory-driven, culturally competent sexual risk-reduction behavioral interventions with various populations across the globe.
An outstanding translational researcher, Dr. Jemmott’s work has had global impact and changed public policy. She has partnered with community-based organizations, including churches, clinics, barbershops and schools, and transformed her NIH-funded evidence-based research outcomes for use in real-world settings. She has presented her research to the U.S. Congress and at the NIH Consensus Development Conference on Interventions to Reduce HIV Risk Behaviors. Dr. Jemmott has received numerous awards for her significant contributions to the field of HIV/STD and pregnancy prevention research, including the U.S. Congressional Merit Award, Sigma Theta Tau National Honor Society’s Episteme Award and Hall of Fame Award, and election to membership in the Institute of Medicine, an honor accorded to very few nurses.
John B. Jemmott III, PhD, received his PhD in psychology from the Department of Psychology and Social Relations at Harvard University. He holds joint faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania as the Kenneth B. Clark Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication, and as Professor of Communication in Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine. He is also the director of the Center for Health Behavior and Communication Research at the Annenberg School for Communication.
Dr. Jemmott is a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association and the Society for Behavioral Medicine. He has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, and has received numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health to conduct research designed to develop and test theory-based, contextually appropriate HIV/STD risk-reduction interventions for a variety of populations in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa.
Length | Elements | Staffing | Notification
Length of Program
The curriculum has 8 hours of content divided into eight 60-minute modules.
Program Elements
Core intervention materials include:
- Facilitator Curriculum
- Activity Set (interactive cards, roleplays, posters)
- Curriculum DVDs
- Tanisha and Shay
- The Subject Is: HIV (Safer Sex)
- The Subject Is: STDs (Safer Sex)
- He Said He Loved Me
- Baby Talk
- Wrap It Up & Condom Use Animation
The Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! implementation set includes the facilitator's guide, activity set and 5 DVDs. The curriculum requires the use of a monitor with DVD capabilities.
Staffing Requirements
This curriculum is designed to be taught by family life educators. Educators interested in implementing this program should be skilled in using interactive teaching methods and guiding group discussions, and should be comfortable with the program content.
Parent/Guardian Notification
It is essential to inform parents and guardians regarding the nature and scheduling of this or any sexual health education program. Prior to implementation of the curriculum, families should receive written notice describing the goals of Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! and the nature of the content to be covered. Parents also should be given an opportunity to view the curriculum and related materials if they wish. The vast majority of parents want their children to receive appropriate instruction and be given the information and skills they need to protect their sexual health, but parents/guardians also must be allowed the chance to opt out or exclude their children from participating in the program, if they wish.
Evidence Summary
Research Design
The original study by Koniak-Griffin et al. (2003), was a randomized control trial conducted to test the effects of the Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! intervention. In the study, the 8-hour curriculum was implemented in four 2-hour sessions in four school districts of Los Angeles County. While the original sample was 572 pregnant adolescents and young mothers, the study reports on the 87% (n=497) of participants that provided data at all 5 time points. The participants were between the ages of 14 and 20 (mean age 16.67 years); 77.7% were Latina and 18.2% were African American. Schools with pregnant minor or young parents’ programs were randomly assigned to receive one of two curricula: Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! or the health promotion control intervention.
Data Gathering
The participants completed questionnaires before, immediately after, and at 3, 6 and 12 months after the intervention. Of the original 572 participants, 92% attended the 12-month follow up (n=525). The primary outcome was an index of risky sexual behaviors in the previous 3 months, which included sexual intercourse frequency, multiple partners, number of sex partners involved with other men, consistent condom use, and heterosexual anal sexual intercourse.
Findings
The participants who received the Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! intervention had a significantly greater increase in behavioral intentions to use condoms at the 12 month follow-up compared to the control group (p < .05). They also reported significantly fewer sexual partners than those in the control group at the 6 month follow-up (p < .05). In addition, the BPBRBP participants had significantly better scores on HIV knowledge compared to the control group (p < .001).
The adolescents who received the Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! intervention had higher self-efficacy to use condoms and demonstrated greater condom use knowledge.
Reference
Implementation Manual | General Adaptation Guidance | Policy
Implementation Manual
The Implementation Manual provides detailed information about the themes, goals and theory base of the program. The guide describes allowable and non-allowable adaptations through the explanation of the Core Elements and Key Characteristics, including a logic model. It also offers descriptions of the various steps in implementation.
Click the link below to view the manual for Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective!
Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! Implementation Manual (pdf)
Adaptation Guidance
ETR is a leader in developing adaptation guidelines to enable professionals to adapt evidence-based intervention programs for implementation in underserved communities, while maintaining fidelity to the intervention's core components. ETR works with program developers to ensure that these tools are of the highest quality and meet the different needs of the field and end users, e.g., teachers, trainers, program mangers/staff, research teams, and funders.
See ETR’s General Adaptation Guidance
For answers to Frequently Asked Questions about program adaptations, please visit our Program Support Help Desk.
Read ETR's Adaptations Policy.
Training & TA
For over 30 years, ETR has been building the capacity of community-based organizations, schools, school districts, and state, county and local agencies in all 50 states and 7 U.S. territories to implement and replicate evidenced-based programs (EBPs) to prevent teen pregnancy, STD/STI and HIV. Our nationally recognized training and research teams work in partnership with clients to customize training and technical assistance (TA) to address the needs of their agencies and funding requirements.
Training
Educators interested in implementing Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! should be skilled in using interactive teaching methods and guiding group discussions. It is highly recommended that educators who plan to teach Be Proud! Be Responsible! receive research-based professional development to prepare them to effectively implement and replicate the curriculum with fidelity for the intended target group.
Training on Be Proud! Be Responsible! Be Protective! is available through ETR's Professional Learning Services.
Technical assistance (TA), coaching and ongoing support
ETR provides in-person and web- or phone-based technical assistance before, during and/or after program implementation. TA is tailored to the needs of the site and is designed to support quality assurance, trouble-shoot adaptation issues, and boost implementation.
Enrichment Training
To support a holistic approach to teen pregnancy and HIV prevention programs, ETR offers a number of additional training and technical assistance opportunities, including content-specific workshops, skill-based trainings, organizational development consultation and much more. To learn more about these opportunities, visit our Training & TA pages >>
Adaptation
Adaptation support materials, training and/or TA are available to assist educators in meeting the needs of individual communities by implementing EBPs effectively and consistently with core components. All adaptation support is based on ETR's groundbreaking, widely disseminated adaptation guidelines and kits for effective adaptations.
Evaluation
ETR also provides evaluation support for EBP implementation. ETR uses well-established tools for measuring fidelity and outcomes. ETR's evaluation support blends participatory approaches with cutting-edge evaluation science. Services address process and outcome evaluation and include assistance with evaluation planning, instrument design and development, implementation fidelity, data management and analysis, performance measurement, continuous quality improvement (CQI) protocols, and effective tools and strategies for reporting results.