New York: AIDS Prevention: Studies to Look at Role of Alcohol in HIV Risk in Heterosexual Women

Researchers at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) have been awarded two grants totaling $3.1 million by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Maria Testa, PhD, received a $1.9 million grant to study how to reduce binge drinking, incidents of indiscriminate sex, sexual assault and STD/HIV infection in college-age women. Kathleen A. Parks, PhD, of RIA received a $1.2 million grant to study alcohol's role in increased HIV risk among heterosexual women ages 18-30.

Testa said her study will develop and test a prevention program with an intervention involving educational materials for parents about adolescent alcohol use and its negative consequences. Six hundred female students and their mothers will be recruited the summer before college. Researchers will examine drinking behavior, drinking-related consequences, sexual behavior and negative sexual outcomes female students report during their freshman year. One version of the intervention will focus solely on adolescent alcohol use and another will address partner selection and sexual assertiveness issues.

Parks' study will use Interactive Voice Response technology for the first time to study substance use and risky behavior. Three hundred women will be asked to call a toll-free number and answer questions on a touch-tone keypad over a 12-week period. In a pilot study in 1996-97, Parks found 49 percent of women who drank in bars left the bar with someone they had just met; 36 percent had sex with someone new the first night. Twenty-eight percent reported sexual victimization, and 11 percent reported attempted or completed rape.

The new study will "consider the relationships among alcohol use, social context, and risky sexual behavior and risk for HIV," Parks stated, "by women who drink in bars, as opposed to home."

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