Focus on youth in the Caribbean: beyond the numbers.

In the 1990s, an interdisciplinary group including pediatricians, anthropologists, health educators, psychologists, and statisticians developed and evaluated an HIV prevention intervention targeting early adolescents living in public housing developments in the USA. The intervention, "Focus on Kids," (FOK) was effective in reducing risk behaviors, intentions, and perceptions and ultimately was included in the Center for Disease Control's portfolio of effective adolescent programs, "Programs that Work." Learning about FOK and concerned about the need for a structured program to address high rates of teen pregnancy and risk for HIV, professionals from the Ministries of Health of The Bahamas approached the researchers about collaborating to develop a program for Bahamian youth.

Gender-based model comparisons of maternal values, monitoring, communication, and early adolescent risk behavior.

Purpose: To examine the relationships among maternal values, monitoring knowledge, parent-adolescent communication, and adolescent risk involvement based on adolescent gender.

Methods: Parental reports of their personal values, monitoring knowledge, and communication with their children were compared with adolescent reports of risk involvement using information gathered from 647 Bahamian mother-adolescent (9-13 years) dyads.

Results: Parental values of conservation (e.

Epidemic crack cocaine use linked with epidemics of genital ulcer disease and heterosexual HIV infection in the Bahamas: evidence of impact of prevention and control measures.

Background: Epidemic freebase/crack cocaine use began in the Bahamas in 1982, closely followed by epidemics of genital ulcer disease (GUD) and HIV infection. Numbers of new clients receiving ambulatory treatment for cocaine use in Nassau peaked in 1984.

Goal: To assess interrelations among epidemics of crack use, GUD, and HIV infection.