A study presented at the 2009 National HIV Prevention Conference found that HIV-risk reduction programs for inner-city black youth can be convincing when churches administer them, Pediatric Supersite reports.

According to the article, investigators studied 613 African-American parents from black Baptist churches located in low-income communities in Philadelphia and paired them with one of their children who were ages 11 to 14.

The parent-child pairs were randomly assigned to one of three types of interventions: a faith-based abstinence-only approach; a non-faith-based abstinence-only approach; and a general health approach.

The interventions included films, exercises and group discussions for three consecutive weeks followed by additional interventions three and six months later. A large majority of the parent-child pairs were retained during the additional interventions.