Mediators of HIV Risk among African-American Men

We evaluated the ability of key theoretical variables to prospectively predict level of HIV risk behavior at six months following the initial assessment among an understudied population of low-income, non-injection substance-abusing, heterosexual men (NI-SA-HM). We found that ethnicity, pretreatment condom use level and condom attitudes at intake predicted HIV risk at a 6-month follow-up. However, a number of variables (e.g.; perceived susceptibility to HIV infection, sexual response-efficacy, self-efficacy) that have emerged as significantly predictive of HIV risk in cross-sectional studies were not significant prospective predictors of HIV risk in the current study. The study emphasizes the value of examining longitudinal data in elucidating which factors may contribute to HIV risk reduction in designing interventions to produce risk reduction among NISA-HM. This work was funded in part by Grant RO1 DA09520 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and RO1 AA12115 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to Dr Malow.