Abstract

This study set out to establish to what extent an HIV-related awareness workshop involving German adolescents at a secondary school in Brandenburg can help to increase knowledge levels about this disease. Only a few studies have explored what German youths know about HIV, with none so far evaluating a workshop aimed at increasing HIV-related knowledge levels among this cohort. In a pre-test post-test design, changes in participants’ knowledge levels related to the risk of HIV transmission associated with different types of exposures or behaviors such as unprotected sex, mother-to-child-transmission, blood transfusions, and shaking hands were assessed. Previous studies have shown that German youths lack knowledge in this regard.

From pre-test to post-test, there was a statistically significant increase in knowledge levels about the risk of HIV transmission. However, knowledge levels about the risk of HIV transmission was relatively low. An average of 59.2% questions were answered correctly at pre-test vs. 68.1% of questions at post-test. The present study underlines that an awareness workshop can be a useful tool to improve knowledge levels about the risk of HIV transmission among youths. However, the results also revealed that there is still some work to be done to educate young Germans about the basic facts around HIV/AIDS. Although HIV incidence rate in Germany has been slightly decreasing, there is a growing number of new infections among people who are unaware of their HIV status – while research shows that youths in this country are seemingly complacent about the danger of HIV/AIDS, and often do not use condoms during sex.

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