Program improved communication between parents and children with HIV

An intervention program focused on improving quality of life among adolescents helped communication between parents and adolescents with HIV, which may influence family decision making in terms of health care and end-of-life treatment, according to data presented at the 2014 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine’s Annual Meeting.

Stefania Davia, a clinical research assistant at Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, D.C., and global health service fellow of the World Food Programme in Rome, and colleagues randomly assigned parent-child pairs to Family-Centered Advance Care Planning (FACE) intervention or Healthy Living Control (HLC) intervention.

Participants completed the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory self-report at baseline and 3 months post-intervention.

All adolescents enrolled in the program were HIV positive and had a mean age of 18 years. Most participants were black (94.4%) and 70.8% acquired HIV perinatally. The mean age of the parents was 44 years.

Researchers found that the FACE and HCL interventions did not significantly increase quality of life among adolescents. However, agreement between parent and child answers were affected by the FACE intervention. Emotional congruence scores increased from 0.21 to 0.61 among the FACE group, and decreased from 0.49 to 0.41 among the HCL group. Social congruence scores increased similarly among FACE and HCL groups (0.41 to 0.62 and –0.02 to 0.2, respectively).

Adolescents with perinatal HIV reported significantly higher emotional and physical quality of life scores compared with those who acquired HIV through risky behaviors.

“Understanding adolescents’ quality of life may influence family decision making with respect to future health care utilization and end-of-life care. The FACE intervention increased communication in all domains, but in school quality of life, where adolescents denied problems and families reported problems. Higher physical and emotional quality of life among perinatally infected adolescents … might represent a measure of their access to medical health care from birth in comprehensive ‘one stop’ hospital-based clinics,” the researchers concluded.

For more information:

Davia S. Abstract 111. Presented at: SAHM 2014; March 23-26, 2014; Austin, Texas.

Disclosure: This study was supported by the National Institute of Nursing Research of the NIH. Davia reports no relevant financial disclosures.