In Vietnam, socially marginalized groups such as ethnic minorities in mountainous areas are often difficult to engage in HIV research and prevention programs. This intervention study aimed to estimate the effect of participatory community communication PCC on changing HIV preventive ideation and behavior among ethnic minority youth in a rural district from central Vietnam.
In a cross-sectional survey after the PCC intervention, using a structured questionnaire, ethnic minority youth were approached for face-to-face interviews. Propensity score matching PSM technique was then utilized to match these participants into two groups-intervention and control-for estimating the effect of the PCC. HIV preventive knowledge and ideation tended to increase as the level of recall changed accordingly.
The campaign had a significant indirect effect on condom use through its effect on ideation or perceptions. When intervention and control group statistically equivalently reached in terms of individual and social characteristics by PSM, proportions of displaying HIV preventive knowledge, ideation and condom use were significantly higher in intervention group than in matched control counterparts, accounting for net differences of 7.
The study informs public health implications both theoretically and practically to guide effective HIV control programs for marginalized communities in resources-constrained settings like rural Vietnam and similar contexts of developing countries. Since the first case of HIV infection sexually transmitted in [ 1 ], it then has spread dramatically through both risk sexual and drug use behavior across the country, with , cases reported nationwide [ 2 ].
To date researchers and policy makers remain uncertain about further development of this epidemic as well as progression of prevention efforts. Given previous research and literature, the HIV transmission has been focused largely upon injecting drug users IDU and female sex workers FSW due to their unsafe behaviors such as sharing injecting equipment and non condom sex [ 1 , 3 - 6 ]. However, much attention to such high-risk groups may restrict our understanding of other groups that may be also at risk of being affected by the epidemic [ 7 , 8 ].
