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Understanding why sports and energy drinks remain increasingly popular among adolescents despite declines in other sugar sweetened beverages is critical. This study points to memory for advertising exposure and adolescent athletic identity as two aspects that together help to explain consumption. An online survey of U.S. adolescents aged 14–18 (n = 503) was combined with Nielsen data for television and social media advertising expenditures by sports and energy drink brands in participants' designated market areas (DMAs). Advertisement recall mediates the relationship between social media DMA expenditures and sports and energy drink consumption. Recall for television advertisements is related to consumption but is unrelated to television DMA expenditures. Athletic identity moderated the relationship between recall and consumption such that consumption increased as both recall and athletic identity increased, suggesting a role for motivated memory and motivated processing of ad messages based on athletic identity consistent with the limited capacity model of motivated media message processing. Based on these results, we conclude that effectiveness of expenditures in influencing behavior is dependent upon both ad recall and ad relevance, and that athletic identity is an important factor in ad effectiveness in the context of sports and energy drinks advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the digital neighborhood, Black and Hispanic youth communicate about issues they face, including sex and substance use. This population of young people is also disproportionately burdened by negative consequences associated with sex and substance use behaviors even when their behavior is less risky. Given the increased likelihood of negative outcomes, we investigated how young people communicate about these behaviors in their digital social networks. This mixed-methods study integrates a behavioral survey with a machine learning-supported, qualitative content analysis of one year of Facebook and Twitter posts from 50 Black and Hispanic youth, with feedback from a youth advisory board. Participants who had previously had sex or drank alcohol were more likely to post about sex or alcohol, respectively. Moreover, compared to male youth , female youth posted significantly more about sex in general and about STIs, HIV, and pregnancy. Posts about sexual behavior often discussed trust in sexual partners and gendered views of sex. Posts linked alcohol and marijuana with stress relief and coping withgrief, community violence, and distress. Understanding how youth think and communicate about sexual risk and substance use can inform the design of effective prevention efforts. Prior State of Knowledge: Social media offers an excellent window into youth perspectives and the ways they broadcast and communicate about their lives, beliefs, and health behaviors to their networked peers. Novel Contributions: In this community-engaged study, we center the experiences of Black and Hispanic youth in their digital neighborhoods to understand how youth talk about sex, drugs and alcohol in their own words. We examined the interplay between posts, social identities and health behaviors. Practical Implications: For practitioners using social media in prevention efforts, integrating youth voices and expertise in the development of online prevention efforts may be more effective in identifying drivers of risk taking and supporting risk reduction behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Journal of Advanced Nursing (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We identify the adolescent and family factors that shape the time adolescents spend viewing television. Adolescent traits, family/household characteristics, television access, and TV viewing time were assessed by self-report using a web-based survey conducted with a sample of 457 14- to 16-year-old adolescents in a Northeastern US city. Bivariate analyses indicated that the number of televisions in the home, having a bedroom TV, and subscribing to premium cable/satellite channels were each positively and significantly associated with television viewing time. Regression results show that having greater access to TV significantly increased viewing independent of adolescent and family variables. In addition, the influence of different forms of access on adolescent time varied by respondent race. Having a television set in the bedroom was the strongest predictor of TV time for White adolescents, and having more television sets in the home was the strongest predictor of TV time for Black adolescents. The pattern of findings suggests that interventions should encourage parents to make their adolescents' bedrooms television free and to reduce the number of television sets in the home. Campaigns designed to reduce TV viewing may be most effective if they are tailored for distinct audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Adolescents and young adults in the age range of 13-24 years are at the highest risk of developing HIV infections. As social media platforms are extremely popular among youths, researchers can utilize these platforms to curb the HIV epidemic by investigating the associations between the discourses on HIV infections and the epidemiological data of HIV infections.Objective: The goal of this study was to examine how Twitter activity among young men is related to the incidence of HIV infection in the population.Methods: We used integrated human-computer techniques to characterize the HIV-related tweets by male adolescents and young male adults (age range: 13-24 years). We identified tweets related to HIV risk and prevention by using natural language processing (NLP). Our NLP algorithm identified 89.1% (2243/2517) relevant tweets, which were manually coded by expert coders. We coded 1577 HIV-prevention tweets and 17.5% (940/5372) of general sex-related tweets (including emojis, gifs, and images), and we achieved reliability with intraclass correlation at 0.80 or higher on key constructs. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify the spatial patterns in posting HIV-related tweets as well as the relationships between the tweets and local HIV infection rates.Results: We analyzed 2517 tweets that were identified as relevant to HIV risk and prevention tags; these tweets were geolocated in 109 counties throughout the United States. After adjusting for region, HIV prevalence, and social disadvantage index, our findings indicated that every 100-tweet increase in HIV-specific tweets per capita from noninstitutional accounts was associated with a multiplicative effect of 0.97 (95% CI [0.94-1.00]; P=.04) on the incidence of HIV infections in the following year in a given county.Conclusions: Twitter may serve as a proxy of public behavior related to HIV infections, and the association between the number of HIV-related tweets and HIV infection rates further supports the use of social media for HIV disease prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The mpox outbreak resulted in 32,063 cases and 58 deaths in the United States and 95,912 cases worldwide from May 2022 to March 2024 according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Like other disease outbreaks (eg, HIV) with perceived community associations, mpox can create the risk of stigma, exacerbate homophobia, and potentially hinder health care access and social equity. However, the existing literature on mpox has limited representation of the perspective of sexual minority men and gender-diverse (SMMGD) individuals., Objective: To fill this gap, this study aimed to synthesize themes of discussions among SMMGD individuals and listen to SMMGD voices for identifying problems in current public health communication surrounding mpox to improve inclusivity, equity, and justice., Methods: We analyzed mpox-related posts (N=8688) posted between October 2020 and September 2022 by 2326 users who self-identified on Twitter/X as SMMGD and were geolocated in the United States. We applied BERTopic (a topic-modeling technique) on the tweets, validated the machine-generated topics through human labeling and annotations, and conducted content analysis of the tweets in each topic. Geographic analysis was performed on the size of the most prominent topic across US states in relation to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) social climate index., Results: BERTopic identified 11 topics, which annotators labeled as mpox health activism (n=2590, 29.81%), mpox vaccination (n=2242, 25.81%), and adverse events (n=85, 0.98%); sarcasm, jokes, and emotional expressions (n=1220, 14.04%); COVID-19 and mpox (n=636, 7.32%); government or public health response (n=532, 6.12%); mpox symptoms (n=238, 2.74%); case reports (n=192, 2.21%); puns on the naming of the virus (ie, mpox; n=75, 0.86%); media publicity (n=59, 0.68%); and mpox in children (n=58, 0.67%). Spearman rank correlation indicated significant negative correlation (ρ=-0.322, P=.03) between the topic size of health activism and the UCLA LGB social climate index at the US state level., Conclusions: Discussions among SMMGD individuals on mpox encompass both utilitarian (eg, vaccine access, case reports, and mpox symptoms) and emotionally charged (ie, promoting awareness, advocating against homophobia, misinformation/disinformation, and health stigma) themes. Mpox health activism is more prevalent in US states with lower LGB social acceptance, suggesting a resilient communicative pattern among SMMGD individuals in the face of public health oppression. Our method for social listening could facilitate future public health efforts, providing a cost-effective way to capture the perspective of impacted populations. This study illuminates SMMGD engagement with the mpox discourse, underscoring the need for more inclusive public health programming. Findings also highlight the social impact of mpox: health stigma. Our findings could inform interventions to optimize the delivery of informational and tangible health resources leveraging computational mixed-method analyses (eg, BERTopic) and big data., (©Yunwen Wang, Karen O’Connor, Ivan Flores, Carl T Berdahl, Ryan J Urbanowicz, Robin Stevens, José A Bauermeister, Graciela Gonzalez-Hernandez. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (https://publichealth.jmir.org), 13.08.2024.)

American adolescents consume more sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) than any other age group. Sports and energy drinks consumption among adolescents is higher than other SSBs. For sports drinks, there is uncertainty about their "healthiness" and also beliefs that these drinks may provide health benefits such as hydration, enhanced athletic performance, heightened mental alertness, and rapid recovery after exercise. Confusion about relative healthiness and expectations of health benefits suggest that factors that may encourage youth to avoid drinking sports and energy drinks, such as athletic status, psychological reactance, and SSB media literacy, may necessitate different approaches to promoting avoidance of sports drinks compared with avoidance of energy drinks. Using a nationally representative U.S. probability-based web panel augmented by a volunteer nonprobability-based web panel of 500 adolescent participants aged 14 to 18 years, we used the reasoned action approach to model intention to avoid sports and to avoid energy drinks. The result show there are similarities and differences in the determinants associated with adolescents' avoidance of sports and energy drinks: attitudes and descriptive normative pressure are both related to increased avoidance for both types of drinks and perceived control over the avoidance behavior is positively associated for with intention to avoid for energy drinks. Sport identification, psychological reactance, and SSB media literacy also play a different role in the sports and energy drink models. Based on our results, the content of prevention messages in interventions to limit sports drinks will need to be quite different from those targeted at reducing energy drink consumption.

A better understanding of the social-structural factors that influence HIV vulnerability is crucial to achieve the goal of ending the HIV epidemic by 2030. Given the role of neighborhoods in HIV outcomes, synthesis of findings from such research is key to inform efforts toward HIV eradication. We conducted a systematic review to examine the relationship between neighborhood-level factors (e.g., poverty) and HIV vulnerability (via sexual behaviors and substance use). We searched six electronic databases for studies published from January 1, 2007 through November 30, 2017 (PROSPERO CRD42018084384). We also mapped the studies' geographic distribution to determine whether they aligned with high HIV prevalence areas and/or the "Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for the United States". Fifty-five articles met inclusion criteria. Neighborhood disadvantage, whether measured objectively or subjectively, is one of the most robust correlates of HIV vulnerability. Tests of associations more consistently documented a relationship between neighborhood-level factors and drug use than sexual risk behaviors. There was limited geographic distribution of the studies, with a paucity of research in several counties and states where HIV incidence/prevalence is a concern. Neighborhood influences on HIV vulnerability are the consequence of centuries-old laws, policies and practices that maintain racialized inequities (e.g., racial residential segregation, inequitable urban housing policies). We will not eradicate HIV without multi-level, neighborhood-based approaches to undo these injustices. Our findings inform future research, interventions and policies., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Neighborhood-level structural interventions are needed to address HIV/AIDS in highly affected areas. To develop these interventions, we need a better understanding of contextual factors that drive the pandemic. We used multinomial logistic regression models to examine the relationship between census tract of current residence and mode of HIV transmission among HIV-positive cases. Compared to the predominantly white high HIV prevalence tract, both the predominantly black high and low HIV prevalence tracts had greater odds of transmission via injection drug use and heterosexual contact than male-to-male sexual contact. After adjusting for current age, gender, race/ethnicity, insurance status, and most recently recorded CD4 count, there was no statistically significant difference in mode of HIV transmission by census tract. However, heterosexual transmission and injection drug use remain key concerns for underserved populations. Blacks were seven times more likely than whites to have heterosexual versus male-to-male sexual contact. Those who had Medicaid or were uninsured (versus private insurance) were 23 and 14 times more likely, respectively, to have injection drug use than male-to-male sexual contact and 10 times more likely to have heterosexual contact than male-to-male sexual contact. These findings can inform larger studies for the development of neighborhood-level structural interventions.

Objectives: To examine how girls and young women living in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods make decisions relating to sexual debut and HIV prevention., Design: Thirty semistructured in-depth interviews. We used a socioecological approach to investigate the role of neighborhood and social context on sexual decision making., Setting: Community-based organizations and on-campus interview sites., Participants: African American and Latina girls and young women age 13 to 24 living in disadvantaged neighborhoods., Methods: We examine their attitudes and beliefs about sex, first opportunities for sexual intercourse, prevention behaviors, and neighborhood environments., Results: Lack of neighborhood safety and safe socialization places led youth to spend significant amounts of time indoors, often without adult supervision., Conclusion: The findings provide insight into the socioecological context in which girls are situated as they navigate sexual decision making. Unsupervised, cloistered time coupled with peer norms to engage in sexual behavior may contribute to increased risky sexual behavior among some youth. Prevention efforts should consider neighborhood context and incorporate structural and community-level interventions to create social environments that support healthy sexual decision making., (© 2014 AWHONN, the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses.)

This study examined the effect of newspaper coverage of HIV/AIDS on HIV testing behavior in a U.S. population. HIV testing data were taken from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from 1993 to 2007 (N = 265,557). The authors content-analyzed news stories from 24 daily newspapers and 1 wire service during the same time period. The authors used distributed lagged regression models to estimate how well HIV/AIDS newspaper coverage predicted later HIV testing behavior. Increases in HIV/AIDS newspaper coverage were associated with declines in population-level HIV testing. Each additional 100 HIV/AIDS-related newspaper stories published each month was associated with a 1.7% decline in HIV testing levels in the subsequent month. This effect differed by race, with African Americans exhibiting greater declines in HIV testing subsequent to increased news coverage than did Whites. These results suggest that mainstream newspaper coverage of HIV/AIDS may have a particularly deleterious effect on African Americans, one of the groups most affected by the disease. The mechanisms driving the negative effect deserve further investigation to improve reporting on HIV/AIDS in the media.

More prevention effort is required as the HIV epidemic increases among gay and transgender African American youth. Using ecological systems theory and an integrative model of behaviour change, this study examines the sexual behaviour of gay and transgender African American young people as embedded within the unique social and structural environments affecting this population. Also examined is the important role played by mobile technology in the social and sexual lives of individuals. Seven focus groups were conducted with 54 African American young adults in a northeastern US city. The findings provide a rich examination of the social and sexual lives of gay and transgender African American youth, focusing on the social environment and the impact of the environment on sexual-risk behaviour.