Nia: A Program of Purpose

Nia aims to educate inner-city, heterosexually active African American men about HIV/AIDS through video-based, small group interventions. The program is six hours total, and can be broken up into two to four sessions for small groups of six to ten men, led by two community-based service providers (one man and one woman). Men receive education about HIV/AIDS and how to motivate behavior change. Participants watch three videos that provide information about HIV transmission risks, HIV disease processes, and prevention. The videos also show interviews with African American men living at various stages of HIV/AIDS. All videos are followed by a group discussion and a question and answer session. Further instruction includes a discussion about condom attitudes, lessons in problem solving, behavioral skills building for condom use, and modeling proper condom use. Nia is an intervention in CDC Replicating Effective Programs.

The goal of Nia is to educate African American men about HIV/AIDS and reduce risky sexual behaviors.

This study was conducted by the Georgia Department of Public Health in conjunction with several academic researchers. It followed 81 African American men randomized into either the Nia group or the comparative video-based education control group with 3 and 6-month follow-ups. Both groups were delivered Nia or the video-based education within the same week, in the same amount of time and sessions. Men in the intervention group reported significantly lower rates of unprotected vaginal intercourse as compared to men in the control group at the 3-month follow-up (p<0.05) and a significantly greater proportion of intervention participants than comparison participants reported "almost always" using condoms (p=0.02).