Parents are challenged daily with a wide range of disturbing issues that are difficult for children to understand and for adults to explain. This Spanish-language booklet offers practical, concrete tips and techniques for talking easily and openly with 8- to 12-year-olds about sex, HIV/AIDS, violence, drugs, and alcohol. The book is divided into…

Results from the 1995 National College Health Risk Behavior Survey, which monitored health risk behaviors among U.S. college undergraduates via mailed surveys, indicate that many students' behaviors increase their likelihood of experiencing adverse health outcomes. Particularly high risks for college students include alcohol abuse, tobacco use,…

Examines barriers to and challenges of professional involvement in enhancing leisure lifestyles and quality of life for people with AIDS, discussing the therapeutic recreation specialist's role and examining service delivery within a framework of the social context of AIDS. Issues related to HIV/AIDS prevention and strategies for implementation…

Reports a study that surveyed college students to identify individuals to whom peers turned as sources of information about AIDS, emphasizing risk behavior, perceptions of condom use, knowledge, and perceptions of sexually transmitted diseases. Results indicated the dynamics of AIDS opinion leadership differed between the sexes. (SM)

Substance-dependent adolescents (n=34) received either a six-session behavior skills training HIV-risk reduction intervention or standard HIV education. Adolescents given skills training exhibited increased knowledge about HIV-AIDS and other favorable changes. Results suggest that cognitive-behavioral skills training may lower high-risk…

Prevention and control of sexually transmitted diseases is based on education of at-risk persons, detection, effective diagnosis and treatment, and evaluation, treatment, and counseling of sex partners. The article presents guidelines for secondary prevention, discussing prevention methods, prevention messages, HIV prevention counseling, partner…

Adolescents privately recorded open-ended descriptions of problematic social situations related to sex. Issues mentioned included birth control, pregnancy, condom use/nonuse, violence, alcohol use, and rape. Few mentioned concerns about sexually transmitted diseases. Subjects who included alcohol as a problem were more likely to describe a variety…

The Safer Choices program, being tested in Texas and California, is a multicomponent program to change behaviors which lead to infection with HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. Components include a School Health Promotion Council, curriculum and staff development activities, school environment activities implemented by peer…

Outlines research priorities identified at a conference on a medical research agenda for child sexual abuse. Priorities address: epidemiology; triage and referrals; behavioral manifestations; medical consequences; technical conduct of the medical examination; emotional impact of the medical examination; normal anogenital anatomy; acute, healing,…

Adolescents are frequently admonished to be socially assertive in order to confront negative interpersonal peer influences. Since the advent of HIV/AIDS in human social chemistry, the admonition has become more critical than ever. But the warning is often proffered in the misguided presumption that social assertiveness is the all-required…

This study examines whether offering sex education to young teenagers affects several measures of adolescent sexual behavior and health: virginity status, contraceptive use, frequency of intercourse, likelihood of pregnancy, and probability of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent…

Substance Use and HIV Prevention Program (SHIP) is a school-based intervention model designed to reverse detrimental trajectories in nonsexual (i.e., substance use) and sexual behaviors by adapting two research-supported interventions: Reconnecting Youth and Street Smart. The Social Development Model provides the theoretical and conceptual basis.…

Needs assessments require staff with the necessary expertise to design the study, collect the data, analyze the data, and present results. They require money, time, and persistence, because the people one wishes to assess often are difficult to access. This article argues for the centrality of a well-done needs assessment when developing services…

This study examined the longitudinal effects of coping on outcome one year following completion of a randomized, controlled trial of a group coping intervention for AIDS-related bereavement. Bereaved HIV-positive participants (N = 267) were administered measures of grief, psychiatric distress, quality of life, and coping at baseline,…

Herpes simplex is a common recurrent viral infection caused by the herpes simplex virus. The two closely related but distinct viruses that cause herpes simplex infections are herpes simplex 1 (HSV-1) and herpes simplex 2 (HSV-2). HSV-1 is commonly associated with infections around the oral mucosa and is the cause of herpes labialis, often referred…