Love, Sex, & Choices (LSC) is not an ordinary story about women and relationships, but LSC is a true story.

Loving, needing, or wanting a man and satisfying those wants by unprotected sex is not an easy idea to change. But change- it must, especially when women know that their partners are messing around, doing things that could involve HIV risk-like sneaking with someone else or injecting.

We all need to get a real sense of how important connection to a man can be and how some women will put that need first. Even when they know he is messing around. That is what gets in the way of using condoms.

As the lead characters in LSC begin their stories, we see how different each is. For example, one begins as stuck in her ways, another is a fine example of loving herself, but, then things change. The idea here is that women can and do change when the basic need for connection is addressed with more healthy ways of loving. And that begins with connecting with and honoring oneself.

Through this project, it has been an adventure to watch women transform to become what already was buried deep inside- beautiful, wise, and strong-like dusting off a diamond. The creators of LSC know that the wisdom to stop HIV is here in the communities.

Through all our research in developing LSC, we know that women who watch this series, identify with the characters and story and get emotionally involved. The lead characters and the video guide force all of us to ask, “What are my choices and how can I feel free to go after the things I really want, instead of acting out the same script?” Through watching LSC, viewers become aware of their own choices and their own freedom to get involved in making their intended choices happen.

Our approach to writing LSC was to take the true stories from women in focus groups held in the community centers, public housing, job training, clinics in cities in the Northeast. The theory that frames our thinking is Barrett’s Power as Knowing Participation in Change Theory.

We invite all women in the community, and those who work and lead in schools, clinics, STD clinics, AIDS Service Organizations, places of worship, public housing and who find us on a web search, to watch LSC on your phones, computers or in groups on a screen. We encourage you to use LSC as a way to be entertained, stimulate thinking and as an HIV and STI prevention intervention. We are excited that at the time of our public launch, LSC is being used at the Boston Public Health Commission and STD clinics

So many women knew how to stop HIV/AIDS that their ideas became the basis of the videos. The videos on this website were the result of a research project, and funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research.

This work is dedicated to promoting health in the community and an end to HIV/AIDS here and abroad.