The proposed research project will monitor and document trends of drug use, sexual behavior, and HIV seroprevalence among injection drug users not in treatment and their female sex partners in the Long Beach area of Southern California. The proposed project will develop and evaluate he effectiveness of two interventions in reducing HIV-relates risk behaviors with IDUs not in treatment. The first is a three-session intensive group training intervention followed by an ongoing group support mechanism. This group training will be compared to a traditional single session education and supportive counseling intervention as outlined by the CDC. During Year One, piloting testing will be conducted with 180 IDUs in order to refine the intervention protocol. During Years Two through Five, 1,200 IDUs will be randomly assigned to the group or traditional interventions. The second intervention is a maintenance program designed to reinforce and maintain behavior change in a cohort of IDUs who have been initially successful i adopting reduced-risk drug or sexual partners. This protocol will be developed and piloted during Year One. During Years Two through Five, 150 IDUs will be randomly assigned to the maintenance program. An equal number of IDUs who received no additional intervention will serve as the comparison group. The AIA/AFA, a HIV- related knowledge scale, social support measures, stages of change measure, and attitudinal scales will be utilized as dependent measures to compare the effectiveness of each intervention. Ethnic and gender differences will be examined. In addition, the proposed project will continue to refine and evaluate an existing enhanced training program for female sex partners of IDUs. This is a four-session workshop that includes the males partners as participants. 300 Black, Hispanic, and White FSPs will be randomly assigned to either the enhanced or traditional (CDC) conditions during the Years One and Two. At the end of Year Two, the impact of the intervention will be examined and the FSP protocol will be revised. The revised intervention(s) will be evaluated with an estimated 390 subjects during Years Three through Five.
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