Geetha Gopalan, PhD

It takes a village: Family-based HIV risk reduction for adolescents exhibiting externalizing behavior difficulties

 

Abstract

This study explored the feasibility and acceptability of “It Takes A Village” (ITAV), a ten week family-based intervention addressing concurrent HIV risk and externalizing behavioral difficulties among inner-city minority adolescents. ITAV incorporates sexual risk-reduction features and externalizing behavioral difficulty reduction strategies of three successful, evidence-based, family-level interventions for minority youth. This study answered the following research questions: (1) What is the average percent attendance for youth and caregivers, (2) What are the main themes of participant and provider written feedback regarding acceptability and recommendations for change? Five caregiver-adolescent dyads (n=10) were recruited from a school- and community-based mental health program servicing low income, minority adolescents with academic and behavioral difficulties. Youth average attendance was 96% and caregiver average attendance was 80%. Using strategies adapted from content analysis, participant and provider feedback was summarized along several major themes: (a) clinical factors, (b) topics, (c) logistical barriers, and (e) recommendations.

 

About the Presenter

Geetha Gopalan, PhD
Faculty Fellow, McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research
gg68@nyu.edu

Dr. Geetha Gopalan received her doctoral training at the Columbia University School of Social Work (CUSSW) in 2009. Through the doctoral program at CUSSW, Dr. Gopalan focused on mental health service program development, implementation, and dissemination for inner-city, minority youth and their families. Currently, Dr. Gopalan is a post-doctoral fellow at the New York University Silver School of Social Work. Since graduation from Columbia in 2009, she has participated in two National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded intervention research training institutes, the National Institute of Health (NIH) Loan Repayment Program, and has been awarded a three-year, NIMH-funded National Research Science Award Individual Post-Doctoral Fellowship (F32MH090614). Dr. Gopalan is also an investigator with the Implementation Research Institute (IRI), at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis; through an award from NIMH (R25 MH080916-01A2) and the Department of Veterans Affairs, Health Services Research & Development Service, Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI). Dr. Gopalan’s interests focus on development and implementation of family-level interventions to improve youth mental health and reduce youth risk behavior, particularly for families with intensive service involvement and extreme psychosocial needs (such as those involved in the child welfare system).
 

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4 comments to Geetha Gopalan, PhD

  • Geetha Gopalan

    Thank you all for your thoughtful feedback and replies. Given the time constraints of the presentation I was unable to go into great detail regarding how this group’s approach differs from previous intervention, but I hope to alleviate this in the paper we are developing focused on this pilot intervention. Finally, in terms of next steps, we are thinking about integrating this model within the overall STEP-UP curriculum.

    Thanks again for your feedback!

    Geetha

  • Sarit Golub

    Great presentation — I really like the way that you lay out the particular challenges for adolescents…too often, researchers and advocates fail to full acknowledge the ways (and reasons) that behavioral skills are insufficient to predict risk taking. Working on better adolescent-caregiver communication is critical work to so many important outcomes.

  • Fascinating talk on an important subject. Appreciated the point about the short-comings of the cognitive-behavioral therapy model for youth with externalizing behavior problems. Some of the clinical challenges reported on seem quite telling; for example, the gap between youth and care-giver attendance to the interventions and the silencing of youth participants in response to “glares” from care givers. This talk certainly packed a lot of detail and nuance into a short period of time.

  • Herb Krauss

    You have a fine presentation style. The pilot work is quite interesting. You go quite far in averring that your group’s approach is better than previous interventions. At the very least, that assertion requires more documentation. It is not clear whether or not other services continue to be provided to your participants at the clinic. It would be worthwhile, I think, if you would spend some time indicating what your next step will be.