Miriam HIV program adopted nationally

PROVIDENCE – Project START, a prevention program for former prison inmates that doctors at The Miriam Hospital helped to develop, has been adopted in a national training model for community-based providers and local health departments.
Project START targets people coming out of prison, aiming to reduce their sexual risk behaviors by providing HIV, STD and hepatitis education, risk assessment and intervention both before their release and for several months after. Counselors also help participants with housing, employment, mental health issues and social relationships.
Rhode Island was one of four states, along with California, Mississippi and Wisconsin, that pioneered Project START, working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention to design, develop and test the model with young men coming out of the corrections system.
The initial study found that men who got the intervention were significantly less likely than a control group to engage in unprotected sex in the first six months after their release.
Dr. Timothy Flanigan, director of infectious diseases at The Miriam and Rhode Island hospitals, who led the Rhode Island study with Kathleen Morrow, a researcher at the Miriam Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, said the program works because it addresses the wide range of problems that former inmates face.
“It was clear that an innovative approach was needed to address this issue, and we were able to demonstrate through Project START that an individually focused intervention that continues after a person is released from prison can successfully reduce their sexual risk behavior,” said Flanigan, who is also a professor of medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a physician with University Medicine Foundation Inc.
The Project START intervention package and materials are now offered through the CDC’s Diffusion of Effective Behavioral Interventions project (DEBI), which aims to bring science-based, community, group, and individual-level HIV prevention interventions to community-based service providers and state and local health departments.
“Project START is a great example of research being translated into practice, and we hope other agencies from across the country can take what we’ve learned and implement their own interventions to help reduce the spread of HIV and STDs in their communities,” said Morrow, who is an associate professor of psychiatry/human behavior at the Alpert Medical School.
To learn more about Project START, visit the CDC Web site.