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News Release
Larry K. Brown, M.D., Receives AACAP Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Award for Scientific Achievement
26 October 2012
Elsevier
Reports award-winning article in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), is pleased to announce that Larry K. Brown, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, is the recipient of the AACAP Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Award for Scientific Achievement for his paper, “Safe Thinking and Affect Regulation (STAR): Human Immunodeficiency Virus Prevention in Alternative/Therapeutic Schools,” published in the October 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and online at www.jaacap.org.1
The AACAP Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Award for Scientific Achievement is supported by the Nobert and Charlotte Rieger Foundation. The award recognizes the best paper, written by a child and adolescent psychiatrist, and published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from July 2011 - June 2012.
Using data from 29 cohorts, Dr. Brown and colleagues evaluated the effectiveness of Safe Thinking and Affect Regulation (STAR), an HIV-prevention program for adolescents in alternative/therapeutic schools. The 14-session program was designed not only to improve HIV-related knowledge but also sexuality-specific affect management and cognitive monitoring for youth who experience difficulties with emotions and cognitions.
A total of 185 adolescents participated in the study from fourteen schools that were randomly assigned to receive either the STAR intervention or a short education program, and the alternate program the following year. The study found that the STAR intervention was associated with decreased sexual risk for the 6-month period following the intervention, with improvement in HIV knowledge and condom usage. The findings suggest the need for ‘booster sessions’ over time to reinforce learned skills and knowledge, and future studies to access the efficacy of the focus on affect management and cognitive monitoring in the STAR intervention.
Dr. Brown and colleagues are to be commended for their work on these high-risk behavioral outcomes, and for developing the first HIV prevention program to show a decrease in sexual risk by self-report for adolescents in alternative schools over 6 months.
Dr. Brown presented, “Safe Thinking and Affect Regulation (STAR): Human Immunodeficiency Virus Prevention in Alternative/Therapeutic Schools” at AACAP’s 59th Annual Meeting, on October 25, 2012, in San Francisco.