"Breaking the Chain" was designed as courseware for Rosemary Lenroe's ninth grade health education class at the Lincoln School. The Lincoln School is an independent college preparatory school in Providence, Rhode Island for girls ranging from K to 12th grade. "Breaking the Chain" should be introduced to students after they have been exposed to the concept of the chain of communicable disease transmission and systems dynamics concepts. This program can be thoroughly examined in one or two sittings. If it is included in a comprehensive health education program, it can be a tool for teaching about HIV and AIDS prevention, systems thinking, and public health policy issues.
The main goal of "Breaking the Chain" is to allow the user to see the AIDS epidemic as a complex system. By becoming memebers of the Lincolnville Health Administration HIV/AIDS Committee, users are required to look at AIDS as a larger problem comprised of many interrelated variables. Although the program deals with AIDS as a public health issue, hopefully the insights gained reinforce safe behavior on an individual basis.
Because "Breaking the Chain" is designed for ninth grade students, it
does deal with sexuality, but does not contain sexually explicit
material or specific information regarding safer sex or safe
alternatives to sexual intercourse. While "Breaking the Chain" is
useful for highlighting political, economic and moral concerns
surrounding prevention of HIV and AIDS, it does not address treatment
in detail.
The extended metaphor representing the AIDS system in the courseware is a "chain." The concept of the communicable disease chain of infection was developed by John Beeston, MD University of Southern California. The general disease chain is adapted in "Breaking the Chain" to specifically model the AIDS epidemic.