© 2003 American Public Health Association
The authors are with the Psycho-Legal Studies Program, The Feinberg School of Medicine, Dept of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University, Chicago, Ill. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Linda A. Teplin, PhD, Psycho-Legal Studies Program, 710 N Lakeshore Dr, Suite 900, Chicago, IL 60611 (e-mail: psycho-legal{at}northwestern.edu).
HIV and AIDS are increasingly diseases of minorities and the disadvantaged.1,2 These same groups are disproportionately involved in the justice system.3 Detained youths may be at particular risk. Sexually transmitted diseases, related to HIV and AIDS,46 are prevalent among detained youths. Moreover, although HIV seropositivity is infrequent among detained youths,4 studies of adult detainees suggest that detained youths are at great risk for developing HIV as they age.724 Although researchers have studied HIV and AIDS risk behaviors among detained youths,5,6,2531 our knowledge is still limited. Few studies used random samples; many used volunteers or referred samples.5,2830 Some studies excluded females.5,26,30 Only 1 study examined differences by race/ethnicity.31 No study has examined differences by age. Some studies investigated only sexual risk behaviors28,29 or a limited number of sexual and drug risk behaviors.25,27,31 This study had (1) a stratified random sample large enough to compare rates by gender, race/ethnicity, and age and (2) comprehensive measures of sexual and drug HIV and AIDS risk behaviors.
Participants were part of the Northwestern Juvenile Project, a longitudinal study of 1829 youths (aged 1018 years) initially arrested and detained between 1995 and 1998 at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago, Ill.32 The random sample was stratified by gender, race/ethnicity, age, and charge severity. We began collecting HIV and AIDS risk data 6 months after the larger study began. The sample size was 800: 340 females and 460 males. The sample included 145 non-Hispanic Whites, 430 African Americans, 223 Hispanics, and 2 youths who self-identified as "other"; 3.9% of the eligible youths refused to participate. Additional information on our methods is published elsewhere.32 Interviewers (masters level or equivalent) gathered HIV and AIDS risk data with the AIDS Risk Behavior Assessment, compiled from 2 widely used instruments (the National Institute on Drug Abuse Risk Behavior Assessment33 and the Adolescent Health Survey34) and selected items from the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children, Version 2.3.35
We reduced the risk of type I error by setting our
We report rates of HIV and AIDS sexual and drug risk behaviors by gender and race/ethnicity (Table 1
Gender More than 90% of the males were sexually active; 60.8% had more than 1 sexual partner in the last 3 months. Significantly more males than females engaged in many of the examined sexual risk behaviors. Drug risk behaviors were common among both males and females; none, however, varied significantly by gender. More than 40% of both males and females had been tattooed. However, injection drug use risk behaviors were rare.
Race/Ethnicity Among females, significantly more nonHispanic Whites than African Americans or Hispanics engaged in several of the sexual risk behaviors. As among males, drug risk behaviors, including ever using drugs other than marijuana and recent use of drugs other than marijuana, were more prevalent among non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanics than among African Americans. Some drug risk behaviors were more prevalent among non-Hispanic White and Hispanic females than among African Americans.
Age Among females aged 10 to 13, more than half were sexually active, more than 40% had vaginal sex, more than 80% used alcohol, and more than two thirds used marijuana. Many risk behaviors were more prevalent among older females. Almost 95% of the females aged 16 and older were sexually active, more than half had recent unprotected vaginal sex, more than 90% used alcohol or marijuana, and more than half had been tattooed.
Our findings confirmed that HIV and AIDS risk behaviors are a substantial problem among detained youths, posing a challenge to the justice system and to the larger public health system.5,6,2531,4044 The rates found in our study are much higher than those in the general population45 and confirm prior findings of racial/ethnic differences.4547 Ninety-five percent of our sample engaged in 3 or more risk behaviors reported in this brief; 65% reported 10 or more risk behaviors. Subjects may have exaggerated their behaviors or underreported them. Moreover, this study used only 1 site and pertains to only urban youths. Nevertheless, our data have important implications for research and public health policy.
Directions for Future Research
Implications for Public Health Policy
Intervene early. The youngest age group (1013 years) had lower rates of the most risky behaviors (e.g., multiple sexual partners, vaginal sex with high-risk partners, and unprotected sex while drunk or high). Interventions with younger adolescents could avert the most serious risk behaviors.
Providing HIV and AIDS interventions to juvenile detainees could reduce HIV and AIDS among general population youths. Most detainees return to their communities within 2 weeks.3 Moreover, many youths at particular risk for HIV and AIDSyouths who use drugs, youths who trade sex for money or drugs, and runawayswill eventually cycle through the detention center. HIV and AIDS risk behaviors among juvenile detainees are a public health problem, not just a problem for the juvenile justice system.
This work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grants R01MH54197 and R01MH59463 (Division of Services and Intervention Research and Center for Mental Health Research on AIDS) and grant 1999-JE-FX-1001 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Major funding also was provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Center for Mental Health Services, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (National Center on Injury Prevention and Control and National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Womens Health, the NIH Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the NIH Office on Rare Diseases, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Additional funds were provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Chicago Community Trust. We thank all our agencies for their collaborative spirit and steadfast support. Many more people than the authors contributed to this project. This study could not have been accomplished without the advice of Ann Hohmann, PhD, Kimberly Hoagwood, PhD, and Heather Ringeisen, PhD. Jacques Normand, PhD, Helen Cesari, MS, Richard Needle, PhD, Robert Booth, PhD, David Huizinga, PhD, and David Ostrow, MD, PhD, generously offered their expertise in developing our instruments. David Stoff, PhD, Grayson Norquist, MD, and Delores Parron, PhD, provided support and encouragement. Celia Fisher, PhD, guided our human subjects procedures. We thank all project staff, especially Amy Lansing, PhD, for supervising the data collection. We also thank Laura Coats, our expert editor and research assistant, and Kate Elkington for her meticulous library work. We also greatly appreciate the cooperation of everyone working in the Cook County systems, especially David Lux, our project liaison. Without Cook Countys cooperation, this study would not have been possible. Finally, we thank the participants for their time and willingness to participate. Human Participant Protection This research was approved by the Northwestern University and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention institutional review boards. We obtained informed consent from all participants aged 18 and older. For participants younger than 18, we obtained assent from the youths and consent from a parent or guardian, whenever possible; when this was not possible, youth assent was overseen by a participant advocate representing the interests of the youth.
Contributors L. A. Teplin, the principal investigator, planned the study, directed the project, and crafted the presentation. A. A. Mericle developed the HIV and AIDS risk assessment, supervised interviewer training and data preparation, conducted much of the data analysis, and drafted some sections of the brief. G. M. McClelland directed the data operation and data analysis and oversaw preparation of the tables. K. M. Abram directed the field study. All authors participated in the preparation of the final manuscript. Accepted for publication November 25, 2002.
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