Inner city, low-income women of Hispanic origin are a population at high risk for adopting substance use and sexual risk behaviors which endanger not only their own lives, but often the lives of their children. The long-term objective of this proposal is to reduce substance use/abuse and sexual risky behaviors among young low-income Latina women at high risk to substance abuse and HIV infection. This small grant proposal seeks funds to pilot test a theory-based prevention intervention to reduce drug use and sexual risk behaviors among young low-income Latina women in the transition to young adult roles, childbearing, and parenting. The specific objectives are threefold: (1) to assess the cultural and contextual acceptability of the content and method of the preventive intervention; (2) to access the feasibility of implementing the preventive intervention, and (3) to assess the short term or intermediate effectiveness of the prevention intervention to alter attitudes, intentions, and behaviors specific to drug use and sexual risky behaviors. The intervention and measures are based on the Social Stress Model of Substance Abuse and Other Risk Prevention. According to the model, the likelihood of an individual engaging in drug use is seen as a function of one's stressors (risk factors) and the extent to which these are offset by stress modifiers (protective factors) such as social support social influence, personal competencies, and community resources (Rhodes & Jason, 1988). Fifty Latina young women (15 to 24 years of age) will be randomly assigned to one of two intervention conditions: (a) the experimental intervention consisting of: a l-day week 4 part series Risk Prevention/Resilience Building Workshop, and (b) the control intervention consisting of traditional health education promotional materials. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods will be used to achieve the project objectives. providing baseline and 4 month follow-up data. The achievement of these objectives is essential to the ongoing development and implementation of a larger program of research whose ultimate aim is to prospectively follow young low-income Latina women over a 3-5 year period, while simultaneously implementing a randomized case control study of the effectiveness of this prevention intervention. This peer reviewed, larger ongoing program of research has been previously supported by number of internal and external research awards.
| Lindenberg, Cathy Strachan; Solorzano, Rosa M; Bear, Deborah et al. (2002) Reducing substance use and risky sexual behavior among young, low-income, Mexican-American women: comparison of two interventions. Appl Nurs Res 15:137-48 |
