Funder: CIRA
Project period: 09/15/2011 - 09/14/2012
Grant Type: Pilot Project
Abstract Text:
The proposed pilot study by Family Life Education (FLE), a private community-based social service agency, in collaboration with CIRA scientist and researchers, is designed to collect preliminary data on sexual cultural logics and practices among Latino/a sexual networks in Hartford, CT. These data will be used in the subsequent development and testing of a culturally targeted, age-appropriate, sexual network-based community HIV prevention model for Latinos/as. Specifically, the aim of the proposed collaborative project is to advance understanding of the nature and role of sexual networks in HIV/STI transmission among sexually active emergent adult Latinos/as (18-25 years of age) by: recruiting a 4-tiered snowball sample of 60 socially networked sexual partners; interviewing these participants concerning their socio-demographic characteristics, sexual relationships, sexual/HIV/STI knowledge and attitudes; using this information to connect individuals who are linked sexually (ego-centered sexual networks) and construct broader sexual networks linking multiple individuals and person-to-person lines of potential HIV/STI transmission, and determining the meanings and cultural logics of sex and sexual relationship embedded in identified sexual networks, how these networks are formed, and how they function. Successfully carrying out the proposed project will be possible because of close, principled collaboration between research-committed community-based providers and community-committed university-based researchers, and will lead to enhanced research capacity at the lead organization, Family Life Education.