People education to prevent HIV/AIDS among adolescents

Abstract

Introduction: The school is considered a favorable scenario for education aimed at preventing HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, as it is an environment where the adolescent spends a large part of their day, it is where the role of knowledge construction can be worked. Objective: To describe the implementation of peer education for the prevention of HIV/AIDS among adolescents in a state school. Methods: This is an action research, where the target audience was 33 adolescents aged 14 to 17 years old, high school students from a state school in the city of Natal/RN. In the first stage, training for information multipliers on HIV/aids prevention among adolescents was initiated, in order to implement the peer education strategy. The second stage was to implement peer education with teenagers, its development was divided into five meetings divided into three phases, with students who participated in the first stage and agreed to continue in the second. Results: In the first phase, the training of information multipliers on HIV prevention among adolescents began. In the second phase, the teaching students chose which methodologies would be used to go over the subjects covered. In the third phase, the educational workshop was implemented with the adolescent teachers and the selected students. Pedagogical proposals based on participatory methodologies were used, with the aim of strengthening knowledge, since such approaches are potentially constructivist and promote greater insertion of the target audience in the teaching-learning process. Conclusions: It was possible to visualize a lack of knowledge on the subjects covered, by showing the vulnerability of the target audience with regard to HIV infection. Encounters with educational approaches involving teenagers at school made these youngsters aware of HIV prevention, making them multipliers.