Preventing Alcohol-Related STD/HIV and Assault

描述（由申请人提供）：相对于其他人口群体，女性青少年处于性病感染和身体攻击的高风险中。由于酒精的使用与许多不分青红皂白的关系和攻击事件有关，减少酒精消费，特别是酗酒，可能是预防大学女生感染性病/艾滋病毒和攻击的有效手段。拟议的研究将完善和扩展减少饮酒的干预措施，该干预措施已被证明在减少青少年饮酒及其相关负面后果方面取得了成功。这一创新的干预措施包括向父母提供一本手册，提供关于青少年饮酒及其负面影响的信息，并争取父母与青少年交流这一信息。大学入学前的父母干预似乎可以帮助年轻人在大学期间抵制饮酒的标准压力，从而减少饮酒及其相关的负面影响。通过增加一个明确处理伴侣歧视和自信问题的组成部分，可以使这种干预措施在防止负面结果方面更加有效。我们计划为即将入学的女大学生的父母制定一份干预手册，针对饮酒和危险行为。在大学入学前的夏天，600名女学生和她们的母亲将被随机分配到三种干预条件之一：单纯饮酒、饮酒+危险行为或对照（不干预）。干预措施的有效性将通过检查饮酒行为、饮酒相关后果、危险行为和负面后果（例如，这些女学生在大学第一年报告的性侵犯和性传播疾病感染）。我们将研究干预措施影响行为的过程，并试图确定可能影响干预效果的学生和家长的人口统计学和心理学特征。这项拟议的研究是PI独立科学家奖（K 02 AA 00284）的产物，该奖项支持Testa博士的工作从基础研究扩展到预防研究。根据RFA的目标，该项目将制定和测试一项预防方案，旨在减少年轻妇女对与酒精有关的攻击和艾滋病毒感染的脆弱性。此外，该项目将有助于了解酒精使用在艾滋病毒感染中的相对重要性，这是RFA的另一个目标，通过比较酒精减少干预措施与酒精加风险减少干预措施对结果措施的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Female adolescents are at high risk of STD infection and physical assault relative to other demographic groups. Because alcohol use is implicated in many incidents of indiscriminate relationships and assault, reducing alcohol consumption, particularly binge drinking, may be an effective means of preventing STD/HIV infection and assault in college women. The proposed research will refine and extend a drinking reduction intervention that has proven successful in reducing adolescent alcohol use and its associated negative consequences. This innovative intervention involves providing parents with a handbook that provides information on adolescent alcohol use and its negative consequences and enlisting parents to communicate this information with their teenagers. Parent intervention before college entrance appears to inoculate young people against normative pressure to drink in college, thereby reducing drinking and its associated negative consequences. This intervention may be made even more effective in preventing negative outcomes by adding a component that addresses explicitly issues of partner discrimination and assertiveness. We plan to develop an intervention manual for parents of incoming college women that targets both alcohol use and risky behavior. During the summer before college entrance, 600 female students and their mothers will be randomly assigned to one of three intervention conditions: alcohol only, combined alcohol + risky behavior, or control (no intervention). Efficacy of the interventions will be assessed by examining drinking behavior, drinking related consequences, risky behavior, and negative outcomes (e.g., assault and STD infection) reported by these female students during their first year of college. We will examine processes by which the interventions influence behavior and seek to identify demographic and psychological characteristics of students and parents that may moderate intervention effectiveness. The proposed research is an outgrowth of the PI's Independent Scientist Award (K02 AA00284), which has supported the extension of Dr. Testa's work from basic to prevention research. Consistent with the aims of the RFA, the project will develop and test a prevention program designed to reduce young women's vulnerability to alcohol-related assault and HIV infection. Moreover, the project will help to understand the relative importance of alcohol use in the acquisition of HIV, another of the goals of the RFA, by comparing the impact of an alcohol reduction intervention with the impact of an alcohol plus risk reduction intervention on outcome measures.