This proposed community-based participatory research subproject is part of our P20 competitive renewal application of the NIMHD-funded Center for Substance Use and AIDS Research on Latinos in the United States (C-SALUD) at Florida International University (FIU). The proposed longitudinal study consists of 4-annual assessments of recent Latina immigrants (N=600;ages of 18-23). By partnering with local community-based organizations, our multi-disciplinary research team will: (1) elucidate culturally relevant antecedent social determinants of liability (consisting of individual, cultural, interpersonal and community/institutional determinants collectively referred to as social determinants) which predict HIV/AIDS risk behaviors (HIVR), concomitant substance use severity (SUS), HIV/AIDS diagnoses, substance use disorders (SUDs) and access to health care resources (HCR), (2) determine the moderating effects of dyadic attachments (daughter-father, daughter-mother, daughter-peers, daughter-romantic partner) on the relationship between adverse social determinants and early adult trajectories of HIV/AIDS risk behaviors and SUS, (3) clinically validate outcomes with laboratory tests (saliva, urine and blood) for alcohol plus 9-drug classes, HIV-EIA and STDs and (4) create a psychometrically sound and culturally relevant screening instrument derived from the obtained results (Latina Screening Index of Risk and Resilience-LaSIRR) which may be employed to identify recent Latina immigrants at high risk to succumb to HIV/AIDS and SUDs. Longitudinal statistical analyses will capture dynamic system interactions between change processes and causal networks to elucidate interactions among the modeled variables across 4-annual waves. Factor analyses will be applied to data obtained at baseline assessment to derive a preliminary LaSIRR to predict HIV and SUD outcomes across 3 follow-up assessments.
The obtained results will inform social policy to develop innovative prevention and intervention strategies for recent Latina immigrants to promote their recruitment and retention into a continuum of health care prevention and intervention services which redirect their adult developmental trajectories away from potentially fatal early to mid-adult outcomes (e.g., HIV/AIDS, drug abuse) to healthy adult outcomes.
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