Parent communication and monitoring may play an important role in reaching youth early with prevention messages.
She stressed that putting out prevention messages was not enough.
"Frequency of contact is key to having prevention messages actually translate into behavior change."
She told the participants that prevention messages to women and men needed to be gender-specific.
Q. Are there ways in which the black culture itself has muddied whatever prevention messages there have been?
The usual prevention message for all these years can be interpreted as saying: 'Gee, we're sorry about racism.
Without more incisive, focused behavioral research, prevention messages alone will not stop the global epidemic.
"That's a direct call to develop not only new prevention messages but also new messengers."