Healthy Youth Program Project

Mobile Youth Study (MYS): Gene-environment interaction effects on HIV risk

This study is guided by an innovative biopsychosocial framework that integrates neighborhood, family, and genetic factors as predictors of adolescent health. The project takes advantage of a natural experiment in which federal housing funds are being used to relocate a quasi-random sample of families living in public housing to more advantaged lower-middle class neighborhoods. The focus is on the interaction between genetic and environmental influences. All youth and families have multiple waves of existing pre-relocation data on multiple health issues. The study is being conducted with researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (Co-I: Danielle Dick) and the University of Alabama (Co-I: John Bolland). It is funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.