Preventive HIV/AIDS actions focusing on overcoming the limitations of interventions of a behavioral nature and incorporating concerns with the socio-cultural determinants of these behaviors currently constitute both a necessity and a gap. This article deals with a study on prevention in the school environment based on a strategy of reducing vulnerability. It is a qualitative and quantitative case study that, within the context of this strategy, evaluates the sida prevention work carried out by students who function as multiplying agents in a public high school in the outskirts of the city of São Paulo. The following stands out in the results: the effectiveness of the proposal, broadly accepted and favorably absorbed by the school's students; the diversified profile of voluntary students acting as multiplying agents; and the tension between the cognitive-behavioral model and the social-constructivist model in the educational processes concretely operated by the multiplying agents. The article concludes that there is a possibility and interest in the action of students acting as multiplying agents from the standpoint of the strategies of reduction of vulnerability. It also points out the need to develop mechanisms for the recruitment and training of agents capable of problematizing and overcoming the said tension.
Sida; prevention; school; vulnerability; adolescence; evaluation
