The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #40323

Suzanne Wenzel, PhD¹, Joan Tucker, MA, PhD¹, Marc Elliott, MA, PhD¹, Katrin Hambarsoomians, MS¹, Doug Longshore, PhD¹, Adeline M. Nyamathi, PhD, RN, FAAN², Kathryn Anderson¹, Judy Perlman, MA¹, Kirsten Becker, MSPH¹, Crystal Kolross¹, and Mary Gilbert, JD, MA¹. (1) RAND, 1700 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407, 310-393-0411, slwenzel@rand.org, (2) School of Nursing, University of California, Los Angeles, Box 956919, Los Angeles, CA 90095-6919

Violence against women, substance use and abuse, and HIV/AIDS are public health problems of epidemic proportion among impoverished housed and homeless women. Research suggests remarkable overlap among these epidemics and there is urgent need to better understand their interrelationships, determinants, and consequents so that more strategic community interventions can be developed to prevent and alleviate these problems and their negative health outcomes. This panel of four papers will discuss the design and process of data collection, as well as quantitative and qualitative results, from a natural history study sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to investigate the relationships among violence, substance use and abuse, and HIV/AIDS risk behaviors in a sample of 800 women recruited from shelters and low-income housing in Los Angeles County. This session represents the first presentation of baseline results from this ongoing longitudinal study.

Learning Objectives:

(
• discuss feasible approaches for obtaining probability-based samples of homeless and low-income housed women and why such techniques are valuable when using results to inform prevention and intervention efforts; (
• describe patterns of substance use and abuse, violence, and HIV risk experienced by impoverished women; (
• describe women's perceptions of the violent acts perpetrated against them and how their experiences of violence are related to substance use and HIV risk behaviors; (
• recognize the correlates of each of these epidemics and the life context in which they occur for impoverished women; (
• describe directions for prevention and intervention to address these epidemics among women.

Keywords: Women, Vulnerable Populations

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.