Background: Sexual and gender minority (SGM) young people are disproportionately affected by HIV in the United States, and substance use is a major driver of new infections. People who use web-based venues to meet sex partners are more likely to report substance use, sexual risk behaviors, and sexually transmitted infections. To our knowledge, no machine learning (ML) interventions have been developed that use web-based and digital technologies to inform and personalize HIV and substance use prevention efforts for SGM young people.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntensive longitudinal designs (e.g., experience sampling methods [ESMs]) hold promise for examining the dynamic interplay between daily adversity, coping strategies, and behavioral and mental health issues among marginalized populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrauma-exposed sexual minority women (SMW) are at elevated risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and hazardous drinking compared to trauma-exposed heterosexual women. To understand whether these problems might be exacerbated during times of elevated societal stress, we collected data from a New York-based sample of trauma-exposed SMW between April 2020 and August 2020, a period of notable, compounding societal stressors, including: (a) living in or near one of the first epicenters of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic in the United States and (b) living through multiple high-profile occurrences of racism-related police violence and subsequent racial unrest. SMW ( = 68) completed online self-report questionnaires related to trauma, PTSD symptoms, and alcohol use, and a subset ( = 29) completed semi-structured qualitative interviews.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To remedy the notable gap in evidence-based treatments for sexual minority women, this study tested the efficacy of a minority-stress-focused cognitive-behavioral treatment intended to improve this population's mental and behavioral health.
Method: The intervention, EQuIP (Empowering Queer Identities in Psychotherapy), was adapted from a transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral treatment as also recently adapted for sexual minority men. Sexual minority women at risk of mental and behavioral health problems ( = 19) and expert providers with this population ( = 12) shaped the treatment's development, including by supporting its primary focus on universal and minority-stress-focused processes underlying this population's disproportionately poor mental and behavioral health.