“font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;”>One of the nation’s foremost HIV/AIDS researchers talked to nurses, student nurses and other health professionals in St. Louis about how they can help curb the epidemic.
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Loretta Sweet Jemmott, PhD, RN FAAN, was the keynote speaker at the 4th annual African-American Nursing History Conference for the University of Missouri St. Louis.
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Jemmott is the van Ameringen Professor in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing and Director of the Center for Health Equity Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in Philadelphia. She has worked extensively to help curb the disease in South Africa, Botswana and Jamaica as well as the U.S.
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>She gets it: the whole cycle of anticipatory attraction and interaction when actions speak louder than words and when emotions have a way of taking over for a brains ― and condoms.
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“When you are confronted about sex and sexual relationships, peer pressure goes out the window and partner pressure comes in,” Jemmott said, emphasizing that young women must develop the self-confidence to insist that their partners use condoms, use them properly and that their partner complies with their wishes.
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“We can design better programs for our teens if we teach our teens how to deal with partner pressure, not peer pressure.”
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Jemmott said knowledge alone does not change behavior. She said the answer to HIV/AIDS and other health problems is in the community, and that’s where health professionals must go for the answers – learning the “code of their streets” to find out why they do what they do in order to affect change in a behavior.
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“mso-spacerun: yes;”> on the knowledge test,” she said. “In order for me to go from here to behavior, you’ve got to deal with all this stuff in the middle – that’s my attitudes, my beliefs, my concerns, my efficacy – all the things that get me to put that condom on, or to eat that better food or exercise better.”
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Jemmott, her husband, John B. Jemmott and their research team have an impressive track record of evidence-based HIV risk-reduction interventions. Their team has received over $100 million in federal funding to design and evaluate a series of culturally-relevant safe sex interventions trials targeting young women, men, drug users, races, cultures and families through church-based parent-child HIV prevention.
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Her work has earned many awards, including the Congressional Merit, and she is a member of the elite Institute of Medicine.
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>HIV/AIDS reduction is a purpose Jemmott is passionate about. She encouraged audience members to find out what they are passionate about and pursue it, pray about it, be persistent. If they aren’t equipped to pursue what they want, she advised, further their education.
“font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;”>“Stay with what you like clinically, find it out and do the research around that,” she advised. “Don’t go far from your passion.”
