Discrimination is thought to be a key driver of health disparities that affect people with multiple intersecting devalued identities, such as HIV-positive Latino sexual minority men (SMM). Ineffective coping with the stress of discrimination (e.g., rumination, substance use) may lead to worse long-term mental and physical health. Within the context of a community partnership, we developed a nine-session, community-based, cognitive behavior therapy group intervention to address coping with discrimination among HIV-positive Latino immigrant SMM. In Study 1, we assessed anticipated intervention acceptability via semi-structured interviews with 28 HIV-positive Latino SMM and ten social service providers and administrators; we used interview data to develop the manualized intervention. In Study 2, we assessed acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effects in a pre-post, non-randomized intervention evaluation with two intervention groups of HIV-positive Latino SMM (n = 30, average age = 48.5, SD = 10.3). In semi-structured interviews, key stakeholders were enthusiastic about the proposed intervention. In the nonrandomized evaluation, feasibility was evidenced by moderate levels of intervention attendance (five sessions on average); reasons for missed sessions (e.g., illness, scheduling conflict with work) were unrelated to the intervention. Linear regressions showed preliminary effects for decreased negative emotional coping responses to discrimination pre-to-post intervention (i.e., feeling less anger, sadness, powerlessness, helplessness, and shame on two subscales; b (SE) = −0.23 (0.10), p= .03; b (SE) = −0.25 (0.11), p= .03). Our intervention holds promise for reducing disparities by empowering Latino SMM to leverage innate resilience resources to improve their health in the face of discrimination.
Planning for an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem: COVID-19 and business resileince in underserved communities
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on small businesses in the United States. However, small business resilience scholarship has seldom investigated the