Session: Abstracts of Distinction: Utilizing Domestic Violence Shelters to Prevent HIV Among Women Who Experience Intimate Partner Violence (Society for Prevention Research 25th Annual Meeting)

Although women who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) have greater risk for contracting HIV, there is a paucity of evidence based interventions for reducing HIV risk behavior in this population of women. Domestic violence shelters are an ideal community based service system for which to implement HIV prevention interventions for abused women. However, they have been underutilized in HIV prevention efforts. This symposium will describe a NIDA funded pilot project that was awarded by the Center for Prevention Implementation Methodology (Ce-PIM) for Drug Abuse and Sexual Risk Behavior and focused on HIV prevention implementation science for women in domestic violence shelters. The first talk will describe how the ADAPT-ITT framework was used to adapt an evidence based intervention for reducing sexual risk behavior, Sisters Informing Sisters about Topics on AIDS (SISTA), for women in domestic violence shelters and describe the multilevel shelter context assessed. The second talk will describe an HIV risk assessment and safety plan that was developed for women in domestic violence shelters, included in the adapted SISTA HIV prevention intervention, and assessed for its usability among domestic violence shelter workers. The third talk in this symposium will discuss the implementation of the adapted SISTA HIV prevention intervention by shelter workers for shelter residents.