Creation of a sexual risk index from the American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA) III to compare nontraditional and traditional student sexual risk.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the utility of a novel sexual risk index (SRI) to better use National College Health Assessment (NCHA) sexual health-related questions. METHODS: The first phase included discussions, testing, and recoding of the initial set of items. In the second phase, a correlation analysis was run; items were systematically removed to achieve a Cronbach's alpha of .714. RESULTS: All currently enrolled students in Spring 2020 at medium-sized, 4-year public university in Florida were recruited (n = 4,850) for the NCHA. Of the 441 total respondents, 223 students were included in the SRI analyses. Most had very low SRI scores, indicating few sexual risks. Nontraditional students were half as likely to experience academic challenges as compared to traditional students (TS; OR = .487, p = .033), while increasing SRI scores (OR = 1.182, p = .022) and decreasing GPA scores (OR = -1.975, p < .001) were associated with an increased likelihood of self-reporting academic challenges. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest high utility and reliability of the SRI. The use of the SRI provides a better overall picture of sexual risk-taking through a score rather than comparison of individual NCHA items.

Collection of social determinant of health measures in U.S. national surveillance systems for HIV, viral hepatitis, STDs, and TB.

Challenges exist in the study of social determinants of health (SDH) because of limited comparability of population-based U.S. data on SDH. This limitation is due to differences in disparity or equity measurements, as well as general data quality and availability. We reviewed the current SDH variables collected for HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases, and tuberculosis at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through its population-based surveillance systems and assessed specific system attributes. Results were used to provide recommendations for a core set of SDH variables to collect that are both feasible and useful. We also conducted an environmental literature scan to determine the status of knowledge of SDH as underlying causes of disease and to inform the recommended core set of SDH variables.