Healthy Youth Program Project

CARES: Chicago Adolescent Risk and Evaluation Study

CARES is a federally-funded longitudinal study that explores HIV/AIDS risk determinants among 346 ethnically diverse youth seeking outpatient mental health services. Study aims are to:

• determine rates of risky sexual behavior and drug use among youth in psychiatric care
• test and compare two theoretical models in explaining HIV-risk -- the Information-Motivation-Behavior model (Fisher & Fisher, 1992) and a social-personal model (Donenberg & Pao, 2003)
• test and compare the two models for theoretically important subgroups of youth (internalizing, externalizing, substance abusing).