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SafePort is a residential substance abuse treatment program within public housing to provide drug treatment to parenting women in Key West, Florida. All family members--women, children, and significant others--receive comprehensive assessments to determine appropriate therapeutic interventions. Preliminary evaluation findings suggest that women who participate with their children are more likely to remain drug free. (Author/JPB)

The field of digital health is evolving rapidly and encompasses a wide range of complex and changing technologies used to support individual and population health. The COVID-19 pandemic has augmented digital health expansion and significantly changed how digital health technologies are used. To ensure that these technologies do not create or exacerbate existing health disparities, a multi-pronged and comprehensive research approach is needed. In this commentary, we outline five recommendations for behavioral and social science researchers that are critical to promoting digital health equity. These recommendations include: (i) centering equity in research teams and theoretical approaches, (ii) focusing on issues of digital health literacy and engagement, (iii) using methods that elevate perspectives and needs of underserved populations, (iv) ensuring ethical approaches for collecting and using digital health data, and (v) developing strategies for integrating digital health tools within and across systems and settings. Taken together, these recommendations can help advance the science of digital health equity and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of situation has gained increased attention in HIV/STD prevention research and practice. In the context of prevention, situation does not simply connote setting or place but also incorporates meanings people attached to the physical setting and how the complex interrelation of setting, meaning, and behaviors influences decisions regarding sexual behaviors and prevention measures. Kenneth Burke's pentadic analysis provides a means to illuminate how situation influences decisions regarding sexual behaviors and risk taking. This manuscript describes the pentadic method, its application to situation and sexual risk behaviors, and its utility through content analysis of transcribed interviews (or texts) with men who patronize bathhouses, bath house staff members, and release forms from bathhouse establishments in three geographic areas. In this case, the analysis reveals that bathhouse patrons and policies perceive bathhouses as situations that privilege expedient sexual release rather than individuals and over how those releases occur. This predominant perspective impedes, but does not preclude, risk reduction. The authors provide recommendations for promoting condom use for anal sex in the bathhouse setting as well as for the utility of pentadic analysis in related research. KEYWORDS. Bathhouses, condom use, HIV/STD, MSM, situational theory, dramatism, pentadic analysis, Kenneth Burke

The theory of reasoned action (TRA) focuses on attitudes, norms, behavior, and intentions in explaining a behavior. This study provides a qualitative, detailed description of TRA components applied specifically to condom use for STD prevention among men who have sex with men (MSM) in bathhouses. Using a detailed, semi-structured interview guide, MSM acknowledged an existing norm for condom use for all anal intercourse and reported perceiving that bathhouse sexual partners were more likely to be infected with HIV and other STDs than men met in other settings. They also, however, reported a norm for silence in bathhouse public areas; this norm facilitated efficient and anonymous sexual encounters but precluded the ability to negotiate condom use verbally. Condom use lapses were generally attributed to this silence norm. Norms regarding silence appeared more strongly related to condom use than attitudes toward condom use. Implications for prevention, practical applications, and future research are discussed. KEY WORDS: gay men, condom use, HIV prevention, norms, silence, Theory of Reasoned Action, MSM

The purpose of the analysis described here was to classify not-in-treatment drug users participating in the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-sponsored Cooperative Agreement study into several 'homogeneous' HIV risk groups using cluster analysis. Data for this analysis (N = 17,778) were collected at 19 study sites in the United States and Puerto Rico. Measures selected for the cluster analysis were limited to (a) current drug use and HIV risk behaviors, (b) mutually exclusive behaviors, (c) behaviors directly related to HIV risk, and (d) behaviors that were not statistically rare. Eight homogeneous HIV risk clusters were produced. Crack cocaine use was the most distinguishing feature of three clusters. Another three clusters were distinguishable by drug injection and needle use practices. Two additional clusters could not be grouped with either the crack- or the injection-dominant clusters. Prostitution was the most distinguishing risk behavior of one of these clusters, and extremely high drug injection frequencies and relative rates of risky needle use characterized the other. Composition of the clusters varied significantly by gender, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and drug use characteristics. In addition, perceptions and behaviors initiated to reduce the chances of becoming infected with HIV varied by cluster. Subjects in the crack-predominant clusters reported low perceptions of the chances of getting AIDS. Perceptions of the chances of becoming infected with HIV among subjects in the injection-predominant clusters were strongly related to injection frequency. Seroprevalence was also related to cluster. Higher rates of HIV infection were evident among the injection-predominant clusters, and higher rates were related to frequency of injection and the rate of risky needle use. Among the crack-predominant clusters, the relationship between drug use and sexual behaviors and HIV infection was less clear., INTRODUCTION The AIDS epidemic has undergone a major demographic shift in the last few years. The Centers for Disease Control (1-3) has estimated that nearly three-quarters of Americans who become [...]

The increase in risky behavior and overall health costs of society result when human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected people are deprived of their needs. Public transfers that are unsuccessful in satisfying the needs of persons suffering from HIV may be a contributing factor to the increase in risky behavior. Another factor is the lack of resources of network altruists that are necessary in filling the inadequacy of public transfers.

Introduction Household air pollution (HAP), which results from incomplete combustion of the solid fuels traditionally used for cooking and heating, affects the homes of nearly 3 billion people. It is [...]

This article focuses on the reliability of HIV drug use and sexual risk behavior data that are collected using an audio-enhanced, computer-assisted interviewing format and compared with data obtained by trained research assistants in face-to-face interviews. Audio-CAST data were collected using a video-text interviewing system with sound and touch-screen enhancements. Data were collected from a sample of drug users, an important HIV risk group presenting unique data collection challenges. Participants were interviewed in nonclinical, community-based storefronts. Unlike most studies involving applications of computer-assisted interviewing, participants were not seeking medical, psychological, or drug treatment intervention services but were attending the storefronts to participate in an HIV risk reduction study. This study, also unlike most studies of computer assisted interviewing which use dichotomous, yes/no, type responses, used a complex HIV risk behavior questionnaire. The questionnaire asked that participants recall precise numbers of partners with whom they engaged in risky behaviors and the specific number of times in which risk behaviors were engaged.

This paper was one of the graduate student research reports chosen for presentation at the 1988 Fort Myers convention of the Florida Communication Association. K. Philip Taylor of the University of Central Florida chaired the committee making the selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literally, the word "outreach" evokes the image of "reaching out," attempting to touch what is currently beyond one's grasp. Activities that help organizations to "reach out" are important elements of most services, and some organizations employ outreach paraprofessionals whose primary function is to help recruit participants into a program. Because outreach is supposed to occur before individuals receive the goods or services offered by an organization, evaluations generally do not measure the amount of outreach contact. However, outreach and program intervention activities tend to overlap when an organization encounters resistance from a population of potential consumers. Drawing on 10 years of experience evaluating HIV risk-reduction interventions for drug users who are not in treatment, the authors argue that outreach workers are part of the intervention continuum, and have important effects not only on recruitment, but also on service delivery. We argue that the evaluation and measurement issues raised by pre-enrollment outreach contacts can be best addressed by improving quantitative pre-enrollment data collection. Finally, we present and discuss specific elements of a system for measuring pre-enrollment contacts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The idea of situation has gained increased attention in HIV/STD prevention research and practice. In the context of prevention, situation does not simply connote setting or place but also incorporates meanings people attached to the physical setting and how the complex interrelation of setting, meaning, and behaviors influences decisions regarding sexual behaviors and prevention measures. Kenneth Burke's pentadic analysis provides a means to illuminate how situation influences decisions regarding sexual behaviors and risk taking. This manuscript describes the pentadic method, its application to situation and sexual risk behaviors, and its utility through content analysis of transcribed interviews (or texts) with men who patronize bathhouses, bathhouse staff members, and release forms from bathhouse establishments in three geographic areas. In this case, the analysis reveals that bathhouse patrons and policies perceive bathhouses as situations that privilege expedient sexual release rather than individuals and over how those releases occur. This predominant perspective impedes, but does not preclude, risk reduction. The authors provide recommendations for promoting condom use for anal sex in the bathhouse setting as well as for the utility of pentadic analysis in related research.