Pilot Study of a Multilevel Mobile Health App for Substance Use, Sexual Risk Behaviors, and Testing for Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV Among Youth: Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Preventing and reducing substance use disorders, sexually transmitted infections (STIs)/HIV, and teen pregnancy, and the associated risk behaviors (ie, substance use and sexual risk behaviors) among youth remain public health priorities in the United States. Equally important is improving the uptake of STI/HIV testing among the youth. Mobile health (mHealth) apps may be a solution to ameliorate these public health concerns; however, few mHealth preventive interventions have demonstrated efficacy in reducing substance use or sexual risk behaviors or improving the uptake of STI/HIV testing among the youth, particularly in clinic settings.

A multilevel mHealth drug abuse and STI/HIV preventive intervention for clinic settings in the United States: A feasibility and acceptability study.

Background: Drug abuse and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), remain significant public health concerns in the United States. Youth are at disproportionate risk of drug use and STIs/HIV, yet interventions aimed at improving STI and HIV testing and reducing STI/HIV risk behaviors through technology-based engagement in clinic settings are limited. The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility and acceptability of Storytelling 4 Empowerment (S4E), a multilevel mobile-health drug abuse and STI/HIV preventive application (app) for clinic settings.

Pathways from racial discrimination to cortisol/DHEA imbalance: protective role of religious involvement.

Racial discrimination (RD) is hypothesized to dysregulate the production of stress reactive hormones among African Americans. Psychological processes that may mediate the association between RD and such dysregulation (e.g.

Racial discrimination and cortisol in African American emerging adults: The role of neighborhood racial composition.

Objectives: African American (AA) emerging adults may become more vulnerable to the consequences of racial discrimination (discrimination) as many begin to occupy racially mixed contexts. Little is known, however, about whether the effect of discrimination on cortisol concentration varies by neighborhood racial composition. We evaluated whether the percentage of White neighbors qualified the association between discrimination and overall cortisol concentration.