Risk Factors for HIV Among Urban African American Youth

描述（由申请人提供）：候选人是一位社会学家，曾获得NIDA的少数民族研究者奖，拥有有关社区和环境因素及其与城市地区青年参与健康危害行为的关系的知识和经验。社会研究中心（SRC），其中候选人目前被聘为研究科学家，是朋友研究所（FRI），成立于1955年的私人非营利机构的研究校园。该中心促进旨在促进行为，公共卫生和公共政策研究的职业生涯的博士前培训经验，为有才华的研究生和本科生在行为科学提供入门级的职位。候选人的长期职业目标是成为一名独立调查员。他希望将自己的职业生涯集中在开发和测试干预模式上，这些模式将城市非洲裔美国青年和成年人置于艾滋病毒/艾滋病的风险之中。候选人建议由他的主要赞助人珍内特约翰逊博士指导，她是一位美洲土著、跨文化心理学家，在少数民族社区与艾滋病毒/艾滋病有关的个人、社会和文化风险和保护因素方面拥有广泛的预防研究知识和专业知识。在辅导阶段，他还提议在约翰霍普金斯大学布隆伯格公共卫生学院学习有关艾滋病毒/艾滋病的课程，并参加国家卫生研究院和其他与艾滋病毒/艾滋病有关的会议。这项为期三年的横断面研究的主要目的是研究特定的风险和保护因素在多大程度上预测了高风险非洲裔美国青年对艾滋病毒风险的看法和对危险性行为的参与。这些年轻人目前就读于巴尔的摩城市替代学习中心（BCALC），他们因暴力行为或其他严重违法行为而被传统公立学校开除，其中许多人从事危险的性行为。一半的参与者将在第一个项目年接受评估，其余的将在第二年接受评估。参加者将是200名男女学生，年龄在11岁至17岁之间，从两个BCALC学校随机选出。评估数据将在两个数据收集年的每年1月至5月收集。这项研究有可能提供一个更好的理解有关的问题，艾滋病毒的风险和参与高风险的城市非洲裔美国青年之间的危险性行为的看法。这项研究的结果将对公共卫生领域具有重要意义，因为它填补了这些青年感染艾滋病毒风险方面的重要知识空白。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The candidate is a sociologist, and a former recipient of a Minority Investigator Award from NIDA, with knowledge and experience regarding community and environmental factors and their relationship to youth involvement in health-compromising behaviors in urban areas. The Social Research Center (SRC), where the candidate is currently employed as a research scientist, is the research campus of Friends Research Institute (FRI), a private non-profit institution established in 1955. The Center promotes pre-doctoral training experiences designed to facilitate careers in behavioral, public health, and public policy research, providing entry-level positions for talented graduate and undergraduate students in the behavioral sciences. The candidate's long-term career objective is to become an independent investigator. He would like to focus his professional career on developing and testing intervention models that place urban African American youth and adults at-risk for HIV/AIDS. The candidate proposes to be mentored by his primary sponsor Dr. Jeannette Johnson, a Native American, cross-cultural psychologist, who has extensive prevention research knowledge and expertise regarding individual, social, and cultural risk and protective factors associated with HIV/AIDS in minority communities. During the mentored phase, he also proposes to take courses regarding HIV/AIDS at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at John's Hopkins University and attend NIH and other HIV/AIDS related conferences. The primary aim of the proposed three-year cross-sectional study is to examine the extent to which specific risk and protective factors predict both perceptions of HIV risk and participation in risky sexual behavior among high-risk African American youth. These youth, currently attending Baltimore City Alternative Learning Centers (BCALC), have been expelled from traditional public schools for committing violent acts or for engaging in other serious infractions, with many engaging in risky sexual behavior. Half of the participants will be assessed the first project year and the remainder assessed in the second year. Participants will be 200 male and female students, between the ages of 11 and 17 randomly selected from two BCALC school sites. Assessment data will be collected from January through May during each of the two data collection years. The research study proposed has the potential to provide a greater understanding of issues related to perceptions of HIV risk and participation in risky sexual behaviors among high-risk urban African American youth. Findings from the study will be of significance to the field of public health by filling important knowledge gaps in terms of risk for HIV infection among such youth.