Racism, African American Women, and Their Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Review of Historical and Contemporary Evidence and Implications for Health Equity.

The sexual and reproductive health of African American women has been compromised due to multiple experiences of racism, including discriminatory healthcare practices from slavery through the post-Civil Rights era. However, studies rarely consider how the historical underpinnings of racism negatively influence the present-day health outcomes of African American women. Although some improvements to ensure equitable healthcare have been made, these historical influences provide an unexplored context for illuminating present-day epidemiology of sexual and reproductive health disparities among African American women.

Librarians Flip for Students: Teaching Searching Skills to Medical Students Using a Flipped Classroom Approach.

This article describes the development of a flipped classroom instructional module designed by librarians to teach first- and second-year medical students how to search the literature and find evidence-based articles. The pre-class module consists of an online component that includes reading, videos, and exercises relating to a clinical case. The in-class sessions, designed to reinforce important concepts, include various interactive activities.

Lessons learned from field-testing a brief behavioral intervention package for African American women at risk for HIV/STDs.

This article describes how Sister to Sister, an evidence-based HIV/STD intervention for African American women in clinical settings, was prepared for national dissemination using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Replicating Effective Programs research translation process. To test the feasibility of the intervention in the "real world," Sister to Sister's original research team collaborated with community partners to field-test the intervention in three clinical settings. Experiences from field-testing and input from a community advisory board were used to translate research protocols into a package of user-friendly materials that could be easily adopted by frontline clinic staff throughout the nation.

The diffusion of a community-level HIV intervention for women: lessons learned and best practices.

Abstract Early in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, relatively few women were diagnosed with HIV infection and AIDS. Today, the epidemic represents a growing and persistent health threat to women in the United States, especially young women and women of color. In 2005, the leading cause of HIV infection among African American women and Latinas was heterosexual contact.

Exploring implementation and fidelity of evidence-based behavioral interventions for HIV prevention: lessons learned from the focus on kids diffusion case study.

Evidence-based interventions (EBIs) are used in public health to prevent HIV infection among youth and other groups. EBIs include core elements, features that are thought to be responsible for the efficacy of interventions. The authors evaluate experiences of organizations that adopted an HIV-prevention EBI, Focus on Kids (FOK), and their fidelity to the intervention's eight core elements.

The SISTA pilot project: understanding the training and technical assistance needs of community-based organizations implementing HIV prevention interventions for African American women--implications for a capacity building strategy.

The disproportionate rates of HIV/AIDS among African American women in the U.S. signify the ongoing need for targeted HIV prevention interventions.

A framework for building organizational capacity integrating planning, monitoring, and evaluation.

Background: HIV prevention organizations are increasingly adopting more intensive and evidence-based strategies with the goal of protecting targeted populations from HIV infection or transmission. Thus, capacity building has moved to the forefront as a set of activities necessary to enable HIV prevention organizations to plan, implement, monitor, and evaluate prevention programs and services. Cost-effective approaches to the provision of capacity building assistance traditionally use strategies that compromise efficaciousness and more intensive approaches can be cost prohibitive.

Diffusing an HIV prevention intervention for African American Women: integrating afrocentric components into the SISTA Diffusion Strategy.

Although race and gender are not indicators for HIV/AIDS, both have disproportionately impacted African American women. African American women represent 13% of the U.S.