Repeat Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Patients: Tailored Socio-Contextual Intervention to Reduce HIV Risk

• STI Outcome Measures [ Time Frame: 12 month follow up visit ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]

  Investigators wish to assess if patients contracted repeat STIs during the study.

  1. Investigators will conduct STI clinic chart abstraction at 12-months post-enrollment to record subsequent episodes of STIs. Because the Milwaukee Health Department electronic STDMIS System includes data from CDC reportable tests conducted elsewhere, investigators will record STIs diagnosed at other sites.
  2. Investigators will test for these STIs and HIV at the 12 month follow up visit.
  3. Investigators will ask patients to report other STI diagnosed anywhere during the period.
  
  

• Health-Related Quality of Life [ Time Frame: Baseline, 4, 8, 12 month follow ups ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Investigators will use the SF-36 version 2 (Quality Metric, 2008) to measure participants' quality of life as a secondary outcome. The 36-item scale assesses eight areas of physical and mental health: physical functioning, impact on physical roles, bodily pain, general health, vitality,social functioning, impacts of emotional factors on social roles, and mental health. The scale and its predecessor, the SF-36, have undergone extensive psychometric development.
  
  
• Social Action Theory-Based Outcome Mediators [ Time Frame: Baseline, 4, 8, 12 month follow ups ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Investigators will assess the action states component of SAT, using a sexual risk reduction specific conceptualization, based on the Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills model of Fisher & Fisher (1992). Investigators will assess social problem solving style to indicate more general self-regulation skills. Investigators will also assess HIV risk prevention knowledge, HIV risk behavior change motivation, HIV risk reduction skill and self-efficacy, problem solving, life optimism, fatalism, self-esteem, and health related locus of control.
  
  
• Contextual factors - demographic variables [ Time Frame: Baseline, 4, 8, 12 month follow ups ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Demographic variables such as income, housing situation, relationship status, education level, and employment status will be used to characterize participants' economic and social circumstances.
  
  
• STI Risk Behavior Assessment [ Time Frame: Baseline, 4, 8, 12 month follow ups ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Sexual risk behavior will be assessed with a Timeline Followback (TLFB) interview. First, the participant is presented with a calendar and asked to identify days that are personally significant. Second, the investigator defines sex in language understandable & consistent with guidelines. Third, the participant is asked to provide initials of all partners during the reporting period. For each, information is requested (sex; primary, casual, anonymous, HIV positive, IDU, or non-monogamous). Fourth, for each occasion of sexual activity, type of sex, condom use, and AODA are assessed.
  
  
• Contextual factors - general life context [ Time Frame: Baseline, 4, 8, 12 month follow ups ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Social Context Inventory. Investigators will use a list of 54 commonly-experienced social and health issues, adapted from Carey et al., (1999), rated on a scale from 0 (not bothered) to 4 (bothered every day) to identify the salient problems faced by each participant at baseline. Because participants will present with a wide range of challenges beyond the STI, and the SBPCM intervention will focus on helping participants address areas that participants select, this measure will assess progress on goals set in intervention sessions.
  
  
• Contextual factors - social support [ Time Frame: Baseline, 4, 8, 12 month follow ups ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  The Social Provisions Scale (Cutrona, 1989) will be used to assess level, type, and satisfaction with available social supports. The global score is the average of 6 subscales: guidance, reliable alliance, worth reassurance, attachment, social integration, and opportunity for nurturance.
  
  

This study is a five-year project to develop and test an intervention to reduce risk among people at high vulnerability for HIV infection: patients who present repeatedly at sexually transmitted infection clinics. Repeat bacterial sexually transmitted infections (STI) such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, trichomoniasis, and syphilis, and repeat visits to STI clinics for exposure and potential infection, indicate persistent high-risk sexual behavior. Recidivist patients further represent a significant proportion of public STI clinic visits. Repeat STI can increase the likelihood of HIV transmission during exposure and some recidivist patients may serve as "core transmitters," propagating an ongoing epidemic or endemic chain within a community. Repeat STI patients also face serious health risks from STI complications. In sum, STI repeaters present significant public health risks and place a large financial and resource burden on treatment systems.

Patients with repeat STI, by definition, are not adequately served by the prevention services currently provided by STI clinics. Thus, additional clinic-based services to reduce patients' risk of future infections of STI and HIV are warranted. Adequately addressing the needs of repeat STI patients will allow limited resources to be more heavily invested in services for first-time STI patients who are more likely than recidivist patients to be amenable to standard clinic-based risk-reduction interventions.

The HIV prevention field has largely been silent about assisting patients who present repeatedly with STI and STI risk; there are no published studies testing interventions specifically for repeat STI patients. In addition, most risk-reduction intervention research based in STI clinics has focused directly on the presenting problem of sexual risk behavior or addressed a single co-existing factor (substance use, depression). However, research suggests that repeat STI is related to a wide-ranging and complex configuration of contextual factors that varies by patient. Indeed, repeat STI is highest among communities with the highest rates of STI in general, which are characterized by myriad contextual challenges (unemployment, poverty).

Novel intervention approaches are needed to help repeat STI patients reduce their risk for HIV infection and for infecting others. Investigators propose to address these gaps in the HIV and STI prevention literature by focusing on a high-risk group of recidivist patients: economically disadvantaged urban African Americans. The intervention will help patients address broader, "risk-regulating" social and contextual factors identified by each patient (employment, housing, domestic violence, substance abuse). Investigators also will address individual risk behavior and affective and self-regulatory factors (fatalism, problem solving skills), that contribute to continued risk behavior and interfere with maintenance of risk reduction after an STI.