Impact of drug use on HIV/STI risk across development among African American female adolescents: An integrative data analysis

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overarching goal of the proposed research is to yield a more precise, developmental understanding of drug-related HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk among African American female adolescents in the Southern United States. The proposed study will use an integrative data analysis (IDA) approach to pool and harmonize existing data from 4 completed HIV/STI prevention trials conducted among African American female adolescents. IDA is a framework for conducting simultaneous analysis of data pooled from multiple studies. The study team will use an accelerated longitudinal design, a method for linking multiple cohorts by age, to assess developmental relationships between drug use and HIV/STI risk across adolescence. Specifically, the proposed research will 1) create a pooled data set with harmonized variables and corresponding codebook combining data from 4 HIV/STI prevention intervention trials conducted among African American female adolescents aged 14-24 years (N=2,243). The study will then use the pooled, harmonized dataset to: 2) examine the influence of drug use behaviors on the natural course of sexual risk behavior (e.g., multiple sexual partners, vaginal sex without a condom) across adolescent development; 3) examine the influence of drug use behaviors on the natural course of STI acquisition across adolescent development and 4) evaluate the extent to which HIV/STI prevention interventions reduce drug use behaviors across adolescent development. Findings from this research will be useful for advancing interventions to reduce drug-related HIV/STI risk among African American adolescent females in the South.