The unique characteristics of the AIDS epidemic exacerbates the problem of inefficient health services utilization, barriers to access, and ineffectiveness of social support services. HIV infected people because of their lifestyle and uncertain future face many complex problems that can have enormous impact on their lives. They need information, decision support, referral assistance, and social support. This is a resubmittal of a proposal to conduct longitudinal experiment to assess the impact on HIV positive patients' health service utilization, health status and risk behaviors of a computer-based system delivering AIDS related health care information, decision analysis, referral assistance and social support. The research design has been simplified, resulting in a substantial cost reduction. Subjects are now randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. The primary research questions are whether HIV+ patients having access to the computer-based system (Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System - CHESS) will differ from those not having access in the following ways: 1) more efficient utilization of medical services without deleterious effects on health, 2) improved functional health status, 3) more patients adopting and maintaining behaviors likely to prevent the spread of AIDS. The project will also report the cost of operating CHESS and CHESS use patterns. Use patterns include how people use CHESS and how that utilization changes over time, across disease stages, and depending on whether people have access to CHESS in their homes versus access in community settings such as clinics, libraries, AIDS support networks, etc. CHESS will be made available to randomly selected males recruited mainly from HIV testing sites in Milwaukee and Madison. Subjects will be able to access CHESS in their homes for three weeks and thereafter at convenient, accessible community sites. Subjects will participate in one pre- and two post-tests over eighteen months.
