PARTNRS has been recruiting for the past three months at our four clinics. It has been great meeting all of the friendly staff and patients at the clinics. The experience has been both exciting and challenging for us.

We continue to have the opportunity to meet and interact with many young expecting mothers and couples. Through these interactions, we have met a fair amount of couples who carry a strong sense of courtship as well as responsibility to themselves and the health of their baby. Many of these young parents have expressed gratitude toward the support and care they are receiving from their providers.

Each clinic we are working with is unique and offers its own benefits and challenges. Some clinics have a high volume of patients-which can be both energizing and hectic. Some of our greatest challenges are in these high volume clinics. At times it is much more difficult to connect with patients when it is really busy. A busy clinic can turn into a social gathering where people use their waiting time to connect with one another (old friends, aquaintances). We feel bad disrupting these social interactions to talk about the study, and find that a lack of interest can become infectious.

A strategy that has been particularly productive for recruitment is when providers and clinic staff refer patients directly to us while we are at the clinic. We think this is because it demonstrates a strong sense of collaboration between our study and the clinic. Once involved in our study, many of the patients have thanked us for providing them a voice about their health, pregnancy, and relationships that will strengthen them, their peers and our community.

Through the continued help and support of our staff providers we are successfully enrolling participants and beginning to build our path to prevention!

Regarding Kwaku’s recent blog–the researchers’ results demonstrate an interesting contradiction.  I appreciate the latter author’s suggestion within the manuscript that the context of the sexual relations may be more important than the age of sexual debut.  One aim of our study is to explore the context of expectant couples’ sexual activity during the transition to parenthood…

Teen sex has been a “hot” topic for years. A longitudinal study conducted by researchers from Ohio State University showed that “Teens who start having sex significantly earlier than their peers also show higher rates of delinquency in later years” (March 7, 2007). Eight months later, a group of Clinical Psychologists from the University of Virginia introduced a study showing that “Teens who have sex at an early age may be less inclined to exhibit delinquent behavior in early adulthood than their peers who waited until they were older to have sex” (November 14, 2007). To read more on both studies please visit;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070226131500.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071112140723.htm

I saw this headline come through Kaiser’s Daily Reports: “Concurrent Sexual Relationships Not Uncommon Among U.S. Men, Contributing to Spread of HIV, Study Says.”  I suspect our data will concur, however, understanding how this behavior changes throughout a stressful life event is particularly intriguing.

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=48574