Do age and gender of social supports matter for low-income African-American women attending an HIV prevention program?

Although social support has been linked to improvement in health behaviors, little is known about social support among those most affected by the AIDS epidemic: low-income, young adult, African-American women and their children. Since the age and gender of informal support providers have been shown to influence the types and degrees of social support one receives, this paper examines differences in types and degrees of social support, by age and gender of support persons, received by self-identified African-American female caretakers (n = 197) attending an HIV prevention program. Age of support person was positively associated to overall perceived social and emotional support, as well as to the support person's willingness to help respondents. Adult persons appeared to provide more overall social support to respondents, and to be more eager to help, than did younger persons, even though adult supports made fewer personal contacts. Respondents received significantly more overall social and emotional support from females than from males. Implications for family-based HIV prevention are discussed below.