Evaluation Report
June, 2000

Comprehensive Health and AIDS Talk for Teens (C.H.A.T.T) is a peer-led education program that trains teens to conduct HIV/AIDS prevention presentations. Since 1997, the program has educated over 5,880 people - mostly teenagers. This program is a training program consisting of 16-hours of instruction through the American Red Cross. (In the future, training will be for 12 hours.) Success is measured by a pre- and post-test exam. Upon completion of the course and exam, the teens are then considered qualified as peer educators. Between February 1997 and October 1999, the HIV/AIDS Peer Education Program has trained 188 adolescent youth to be peer educators. The majority of participants were female (78%) and African American (63%). Hispanics comprised 1% of the program graduates, followed by Euro Americans (13%) and Asian Americans (8%).

To identify schools interested in creating this program for their students for the 1999-2000 school year, the American Red Cross sent out promotional literature to school nurses in an 18-county area seeking adult sponsors for the in-house program. Ultimately, the Health Occupations Student Association (HOSA) was identified as a receptive audience for this type of program and 64 new students from four schools, School1, School 2, School 3, and School 4 in Houston Independent School District were trained to be peer educators. No new peer educators were trained at School 5 however teens trained in prior years did participate in the program by conducting peer education sessions.

The program had identified ambitious goals for the year - 120 students trained to be peer educators, 1440 students requesting information individually, and 1060 students participating in a group presentation. The actual outcomes reported for the first two goals were lower percentages--64 peer educators were trained (53%); 490 individual youth requested information (34%); however the students overwhelmingly accomplished the third goal with 2006 students attending a group presentation (189%).

Unanticipated barriers impacted the final outcomes - peer educators terminating the program, principals' restricting presentation time and access to student audiences, school sponsors without the time to devote to the program, students with multiple activities/responsibilities, etc. Notwithstanding these barriers, the program can still lay claim to a successful program of HIV peer education to teens.