Introduction: Adolescent women living with HIV or who are at high risk for HIV have a unique set of personal and service needs which often slip through the cracks in traditional service delivery systems. To address the needs of young people with HIV, the Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Program of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funded a set of ten adolescent-focused programs specifically to provide innovative HIV services to this population.

Project Description: A cross-cutting evaluation of ten adolescent-focused HIV service demonstration projects was implemented over a three year period. A common method of collecting data among the ten projects was developed in collaboration between the grantees, the evaluators, and HRSA/HAB's SPNS.

Results: A total of 1,336 young women 11 - 27 years of age were enrolled into services across the ten projects between December 1993 and March 1996. The women were 27% African American, 40% Caucasian, 18% Latina, and 15% other ethnicities. 10% identified themselves as homeless, 7% were involved with the criminal justice system, 17% were involved with the mental health system, and 16% identified a therapeutic issue related to a partner at the time of enrollment into services. A more detailed psychosocial profile is available for a subset of 161 women, 11% of whom were known to be living with HIV. Young women with HIV were significantly more likely to express the need for medication and alternative health care than women who were not identified as HIV-positive.

Implications: The characteristics and service needs of adolescent women with HIV are likely to differ somewhat from those of adult women. This paper reviews a number of issues suggested by the findings of the ten adolescent SPNS Program projects, and how they may generalize to other programs for young women living with or at high risk for HIV.