Trust as a dyadic mechanism of action: a call to explore patient-provider relationships in the twenty-first century.

There is general agreement that trust between patients and providers influences patient knowledge, behaviors, and adherence to provider-recommendations--with subsequent impacts on patient health-related outcomes and provider practices. There is less academic agreement on the processes by which trust is formulated and changed over time and how trust with ongoing healthcare providers can influence health-related outcomes over time. This opinion draws on social constructionism and symbolic interactionism to posit the possibility that trust can emanate through the communication process, during which a patient and provider transmit and attend to words, images, and paralanguage to convey their states of being and to induce responses, usually acknowledgement, suasion, or physical behaviors, from one another.

Advancing digital health equity: Directions for behavioral and social science research.

The field of digital health is evolving rapidly and encompasses a wide range of complex and changing technologies used to support individual and population health. The COVID-19 pandemic has augmented digital health expansion and significantly changed how digital health technologies are used. To ensure that these technologies do not create or exacerbate existing health disparities, a multi-pronged and comprehensive research approach is needed.

HIV-Related Stigma Research as a Priority at the National Institutes of Health.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recognizes that, despite HIV scientific advances, stigma and discrimination continue to be critical barriers to the uptake of evidence-based HIV interventions. Achieving the Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America (EHE) goals will require eliminating HIV-related stigma. NIH has a significant history of supporting HIV stigma research across its Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs) as a research priority.

NIH-Funded CBPR: Self-Reported Community Partner and Investigator Perspectives.

The community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach across health contexts has matured greatly over the last 20 years. Though contributions to the literature on the development and effectiveness of CBPR interventions have grown, the number of publications on the function and evaluation of actual community-research partnerships has not kept pace. To help address that gap, we searched National Institutes of Health archival data and identified a set of 489 CBPR projects including collaboration-building, exploratory/pilot, research, and program project grants.

NIH research opportunities for the prevention and treatment for chronic conditions.

Chronic conditions constitute the leading cause of death and disability in the USA and constitute 86 per cent of the nation's annual healthcare expenses. Approximately half of all American adults have at least one chronic condition; 25 per cent of these Americans have two or more chronic conditions. The National Institutes of Health have funded many projects that explain epidemiology, risk factors, and prevention and treatment of chronic conditions, though research questions remain.

Evaluation of a mid-career investigator career development award: Assessing the ability of OppNet K18 awardees to obtain NIH follow-on research funding.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) K18 award mechanism provides funded opportunities for established investigators to gain knowledge in fields outside of their primary disciplines, but outcomes associated with these awards have not been evaluated to date. NIH's Basic Behavioral and Social Sciences Opportunity Network (OppNet) is one of the few initiatives that has used this award mechanism. We explored how the unique features of K18 awards affect the ability of recipients to obtain follow-on NIH research funding.

National Institutes of Health Research Plan on Rehabilitation: NIH Medical Rehabilitation Coordinating Committee.

One in five Americans experiences disability that affects their daily function because of impairments in mobility, cognitive function, sensory impairment, or communication impairment. The need for rehabilitation strategies to optimize function and reduce disability is a clear priority for research to address this public health challenge. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently published a Research Plan on Rehabilitation that provides a set of priorities to guide the field over the next 5 years.

Measuring the Influence of Legally Recognized Partnerships on the Health and Well-Being of Same-Sex Couples: Utility of the California Health Interview Survey.

Purpose: This study explored the utility of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) to compare health-related outcomes among gay men, lesbians, and heterosexuals who reported being in a legally recognized partnership.

Methods: We regressed sexual identity and marriage/legally recognized partnership status on seven different outcomes related to health insurance coverage, medical services access and use, and general health and well-being using CHIS data collected between 2009 and 2013.

Results: There were 1432 respondents who identified as gay, lesbian, or homosexual, and 67,746 who identified as heterosexual.

Household air pollution in low- and middle-income countries: health risks and research priorities.

William Martin and colleagues report on their stakeholder meetings that reviewed the health risks of household air pollution and cookstoves, and identified research priorities in seven key areas.

"Risks both known and unknown"a qualitative method to assess the role of situation in HIV/STD risk and prevention.

The idea of situation has gained increased attention in HIV/STD prevention research and practice. In the context of prevention, situation does not simply connote setting or place but also incorporates meanings people attached to the physical setting and how the complex interrelation of setting, meaning, and behaviors influences decisions regarding sexual behaviors and prevention measures. Kenneth Burke's pentadic analysis provides a means to illuminate how situation influences decisions regarding sexual behaviors and risk taking.

Perceived HIV-related Stigma and HIV Disclosure to Relationship Partners after Finding Out about the Seropositive Diagnosis.

The present study examined how perceived HIV-related stigma (how much HIV-infected persons believe that the public stigmatizes someone with HIV) influences both reasons for and against HIV disclosure and self-reports of HIV disclosure to a friend, intimate partner and a parent. The research participants were 145 men and women living with HIV. They were asked to recall when they first learned about their HIV diagnosis.

Sticky business: patterns of procurement and misuse of prescription cough syrup in Houston.

Reports of recreational codeine cough syrup use have increased in Houston and in the state of Texas. Occasional and polydrug users increasingly have consumed codeine cough syrup (with or without alcohol or other drugs) over the past three years, accounting for a $40 increase in the price of an eight-ounce bottle on the underground economy. News stories regarding syrup abuse and reports of deaths by codeine overdoses suggested the need to explore this emerging drug trend.

Treating substance-using women and their children in public housing: preliminary evaluation findings.

The Key West Housing Authority created SafePort, a residential substance abuse treatment program within public housing to provide drug treatment to parenting women. All family members-women, children, and significant others-receive comprehensive assessments to determine appropriate therapeutic interventions to resolve their problems. Preliminary evaluation findings suggest that women who participate with their children are more likely to remain drug free than are those who participated without their children.

A comparison of the reliability of self-reported drug use and sexual behaviors using computer-assisted versus face-to-face interviewing.

The purpose of this study was to assess the reliability of responses to HIV risk behavior questions obtained using a voice-enhanced, computer-administered self-interview (audio-CASI) system with touch-screen response compared with those obtained via face-to-face interviews administered by trained and experienced interviewers. Additionally, the study assessed bias that may be attributable to an audio-CASI data collection format. The design of the study was a four-group crossover design with random assignment to one of four study conditions: (a) audio-CASI interview at both intake and retest, (b) face-to-face interview at both intake and retest, (c) audio-CASI interview at intake and face-to-face interview at retest, and (d) face-to-face interview at intake and audio-CASI interview at retest.

Perceived compliance with AZT dosing among a sample of African-American drug users.

The purpose of this report was to present findings from a pilot study conducted to explore the associations between sociodemographic, drug use, and health belief factors and perceived compliance with zidovudine (AZT) among African-American drug users. Data were collected in Washington, DC, USA from individuals who were African-American; were recent or current drug injectors or crack smokers; were HIV-seropositive, and were receiving treatment for HIV infection. Participants were recruited through local organizations that provide services to HIV-infected persons.

Embalming fluid-soaked marijuana: new high or new guise for PCP?

A growing trend of smoking marijuana soaked in what is purported to be embalming fluid has been reported in the literature since the mid-1980s. This article describes several cases of intoxication, gives regional epidemiological data on this phenomenon, and includes current nomenclature. The authors also analyze a sample of fluid said to be embalming fluid and discover PCP (phencyclidine) and multiple congeners and by-products of PCP manufacture.

A cluster analysis of not-in-treatment drug users at risk for HIV infection.

The purpose of the analysis described here was to classify not-in-treatment drug users participating in the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-sponsored Cooperative Agreement study into several "homogeneous" HIV risk groups using cluster analysis. Data for this analysis (N=17,778) were collected at 19 study sites in the United States and Puerto Rico. Measures selected for the cluster analysis were limited to (a) current drug use and HIV risk behaviors, (b) mutually exclusive behaviors, (c) behaviors directly related to HIV risk, and (d) behaviors that were not statistically rare.

Introduction of HIV into drug injector networks outside AIDS epicentres.

Injection drug users (IDUs) continue to be at risk for HIV infection despite high levels of knowledge about how human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is transmitted. Yet, among not-in-treatment injection drug users, the chances of becoming infected with HIV vary substantially. Information regarding the factors that facilitate the introduction of HIV into networks of drug injectors in low HIV seroprevalence cities is urgently needed.

Powerlessness and HIV prevention among people who trade sex for drugs ('strawberries').

Researchers and members of the drug culture have employed the term 'strawberries' to describe African American women who trade sex for drugs. Data from six US cities participating in a community-based drug research project were analysed to examine the determinants of trading sex for drugs. As shown by our data, some African American women match the street description commonly attributed to 'strawberries'.

Influence of interpersonal and mass-mediated interventions on injection drug and crack users: diffusion of innovations and HIV risk behaviors.

Evaluation research of public health media campaigns to influence behavior change often bemoans the lack of relevance to target audience and an absence of integrated interpersonal and mass-mediated communication channels. The assumption that illegal drug users are disconnected from mass-mediated communication may account for this absence of media interventions. The authors used cross-tabulation, chi-square, and regression analyses to demonstrate that many out-of-treatment drug users in an HIV-prevention research project are media consumers and that participants who recalled seeing or hearing media interventions reported greater levels of positive behavior change than participants who did not recall such messages.

An assessment of the risks of syphilis and HIV infection among a sample of not-in-treatment drug users in Houston, Texas.

The research presented in this paper details the results of an assessment of the risk factors associated with having a positive syphilis or HIV serology. The study was conducted using a sample of not-in-treatment drug users volunteering to participate in an HIV risk reduction intervention. The sample was composed of individuals who had injected drugs within 30 days or smoked crack cocaine 48 hours prior to participation in the study.