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Common strategies employed in preventing STI/AIDS transmission among young adults in America include abstinence, monogamy and safer sex. These strategies require a high level of vigilance and responsibility and, according to inner city participants in Project PHRESH.comm, neither option is always desirable, available, or rational in the context of their lived experiences. This article reports findings from Project PHRESH.comm, a mixed-method, ethnographic study incorporating data from focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, coital diaries, systematic cultural assessments and a structured survey designed to explore concepts of risk and decision making about condom use among at risk African American and Puerto Rican young adults aged 18-25 years in Hartford, CT. We found that many young adults from our study population rely on a strategy of using clinic-sponsored STI/AIDS screening when wanting to discontinue condom use with a partner. While our data suggest that screening is a common strategy used by many couples to transition to having sex without a condom, the data also show that most youth do not maintain monogamy even in long-term, serious relationships. Thus, sharing test results may provide a false sense of security in the sexual culture of inner city, minority youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To systematically study and document regional variations in descriptions of nervios, we undertook a multisite comparative study of the illness among Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Guatemalans. We also conducted a parallel study on susto (Weller et al. 2002, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 26(4): 449-472), which allows for a systematic comparison of these illnesses across sites. The focus of this paper is inter- and intracultural variations in descriptions in four Latino populations of the causes, symptoms, and treatments of nervios, as well as similarities and differences between nervios and susto in these same communities. We found agreement among all four samples on a core description of nervios, as well as some overlap in aspects of nervios and susto. However, nervios is a much broader illness, related more to continual stresses. In contrast, susto seems to be related to a single stressful event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]