Haitian Youth: Risk of Drug Use and HIV Infection

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): As HIV and AIDS continue to ravage minority populations in the United States, adolescent members of these groups attract particular concern. Haitian adolescents appear, based on information available to the investigative team, to incur notable risk of HIV infection. Circumstances of recent immigration, familial re-organization, pre-existing health beliefs, and re-formulation of sexual values all contribute to Haitian adolescent's worsening risk, but as yet these risks have not been adequately characterized to provide necessary guidance to efforts to prevent further risk in this group. The proposed study will be conducted thorough ethnographic investigation of risky behavior among Haitian Youth in Miami/Dade County. Preliminary investigations using ethnographic methods revealed patterns of risk among young Haitians that demand further and more in-depth examination. Responses of 300 adolescents, age range 13-18, recruited from known habitats of Haitian youth will provide valuable data about sociodemographic characteristics and provide an entryway for open-ended interviewing and other varieties of in-depth studies. In addition to in-depth interviews, the research team will conduct informal observations of youth in natural habitat, in-depth interviews with families and focus groups with peers. Materials collected in this way will be recorded, transcribed to electronic files, coded for content, and analyzed using software developed for qualitative analysis. Analyses of these data will provide the answers to research questions regarding sexual values and their formation in an immigrant setting, gender roles among Haitian youth and their relation to risk, the role of drug use in risk, and other questions that help to define the nature of risk in this population. Results from this study will serve not only to guide the formulation of prevention programs but also to provide important information in the construction of broadly applied surveys on risk in the Haitian community in Miami/Dade.