Correlates of African American female adolescent offenders 3, 4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or “Ecstasy”) use and sexually transmitted infection morbidity

Abstract

The current study was designed to determine the extent to which self-reported ecstasy use in a population of juvenile adolescent detainees in a southern state is associated with high-risk health behaviors pertaining to sexually transmitted infection (STI) symptomology and past history of STI occurrence. Participants were 764 African American females extracted from an overall sample of 2,260 juvenile offenders housed at selected Youth Development Campuses in the state of Georgia. Significance tests were conducted using univariate logistic regressions to examine the independent associations of participant’s self-reported ecstasy use and dichotomized HIV risk behavior correlates and history of having a prior STI before the most recent incarceration Participants who reported ecstasy use prior to incarceration were 1.7 (OR = 1.68, 95% CI = 0.78–3.64) and 1.8 times (OR = 1.87, 95% CI = 1.24–2.81) more likely respectively to indicate having had genital warts or chlamydia, and were more than 1.5 times (OR = 2.21, 95% CI = 0.83–5.44) and two times more likely to report having had gonorrhea or herpes, accordingly. Prevention programs for adolescent offender populations should develop interventions that target adolescents’ substance use behavior as a function of STI risk taking as well as being culturally competent to deal specifically with these problem behaviors.

Integrating Individual and Contextual Factors to Explain Disparities in HIV/STI Among Heterosexual African American Youth: A Contemporary Literature Review and Social Ecological Model

“…Substance use has also been implicated in HIV/STI risk among young African Americans, including cigarette (Berg et al, 2012;Hill et al, 2014;Swartzendruber, Sales, Brown, DiClemente, & Rose, 2014;Waldrop-Valverde et al, 2013) cocaine (Ritchwood, DeCoster, Metzger, Bolland, & Danielson, 2016), opiate (Mulatu, Leonard, Godette, & Fulmore, 2008), ecstasy (J. M. Jackson et al, 2015;Stephens et al, 2016) and inhalant use (Berger, Khan, & Cleland, 2016) as well as general substance use problems (Woods-Jaeger, Jaeger, . However, alcohol and marijuana, the most commonly-used substances among African American adolescents and young adults (Miech, Johnston, O'Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2016), are the substances most often studied among this population, both showing consistent relationships with HIV/STI risk (e.g., Keen, Blanden, & Rehmani, 2016;Sales, Monahan, et al, 2014;Swartzendruber, Sales, Brown, DiClemente, & Rose, 2014;.…”

Powder and Crack Cocaine Use as a Determinant of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) Occurrence among US Juvenile Offenders

“…This may be why some have suggested that such behavioral observations are consistent with maturational changes in brain observed from early to late adolescence specific to developmental brain chemistry [51]. Moreover, based on the aforementioned and since adolescence as a developmental period is marked by a greater probability to initiate drug use and with an increased risk to develop addiction and adulthood dependency [53], exploring cocaine use among adolescent with a history of problem behavior and interaction with the criminal justice system may enable the creation of more targeted interventions that focus on problem behavior, drug use and sexual risk taking [54].…”

Educational technologies on sexually transmitted infections for incarcerated women

“…In addition, incarcerated individuals have a history of risky behavior in prison, such as sharing needles and unprotected sex, which favor the occurrence of this type of infection (7)(8) . Among the STIs most associated with this population are HIV, syphilis, genital herpes, viral hepatitis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and HPV (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15) .…”