SPECIAL SESSION: Understanding and Promoting Safer Sex Behavior: The Power of Story, Technology & Other Observations

Description/Overview: Low income adolescents and adults in the U.S. continue to experience health disparities in the area of sexual and reproductive health. For nearly 30 years, Dr. Norris has studied sexual behavior among adolescents and young adults. This work has consistently been conducted in an interdisciplinary context. The impetus for this work was an undergraduate nursing student clinical experience in which she saw the potential power of one adolescent’s personal story for impacting sexual risk behavior. During her dissertation and under the guidance of her nursing and psychology mentors, she conceptualized her clinical experience in terms of memory structures and processes that impact judgement and decision making. Post-doctorally, she expanded her notion of memory structures to include risk avoidance actions (e.g., condom use) and broadened her conceptual approach by incorporating social determinants of health, cultural and immigration experience related concepts. Over time, her work and that of others convinced her that early intervention (i.e., intervening with early adolescents between the ages of 11 and 14) was critical. Delaying initiation of intercourse until age 16 can have a profound impact on sexual and reproductive health disparities by decreasing the incidence of pregnancies at high risk for pre-term birth, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections. However, vulnerability to peer pressure, driven by a strong need for peer acceptance, puts early adolescents at risk for being exposed to older teens engaging in sexual behavior, yielding to pressure to engage in sexual behavior, and experimenting sexually. All phenomenon that increase their risk for early initiation. Moreover, this same vulnerability to peer pressure also decreases the effectiveness of traditional skill building components in our intervention toolkit. Working now in a transdisciplinary context with communication scientists, actors, game designers, and emerging media experts, Dr. Norris designed an intervention program, Mighty Girls, that uses classroom sessions and a virtual reality, live simulation game, DRAMA-RAMA, to build the skills early adolescents need to resist peer pressure. An advantage of this intervention approach is that the classroom sessions use highly interactive and fun activities to scaffold formal operations thinking related to risky behavior and teach early adolescents how to resist peer pressure in a way that protects their friendships and does not jeopardize peer acceptance. Meanwhile, DRAMA-RAMA, a game empowered by cutting edge technology and a replacement for traditional role play, engages participants (at this phase of the research, early adolescent Latinas) in creating their own story as they talk with avatars representing typical early adolescents. This story incorporates key intervention constructs, but its true power is the power of all stories – “their stickiness” which results from their ability to encode constructs more deeply in memory. Potentially long lasting effects on behavior can occur when stories incorporate experiences of successfully using risk reducing strategies in a challenging situation. This presentation will summarize the full circle of Dr. Norris’s work, ending with her Mighty Girls intervention, and the NIH funded efficacy trial she is currently conducting with 7th grade Latinas, attending one of 20+ public schools serving low income communities in Miami, Florida.