The UCLA Healthy Living Project is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and is designed to promote health-related behavior changes in adults living with HIV. This project aims to reduce sexual and injection drug use risk behaviors among 1,200 HIV positive men and women in order to decrease the likelihood of secondary HIV transmission. The research study is focused on four subgroups: women, heterosexual men, men who have sex with men, and injection drug users. The study is being conducted at four sites: Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, and San Francisco.

The project is divided into two phases:

Phase I, now completed, began in February 1999. This was a qualitative phase, designed to: Understand the interpersonal contexts that affect the daily life and risk behaviors of people living with HIV; understand stages of adaptation to serostatus; and identify barriers and strategies for safer sex, positive health care acts, and improved quality of life.

Phase II began in May 2000 and will continue through 2003. This part of the study is to deliver an intervention that is designed to target and assess health promotion, HIV transmission risk reduction, and psychological coping strategies.

The Healthy Living intervention is comprised of 15 individually delivered counseling sessions covering three areas: "Stress, Coping, and Adjustment," "Risk Behaviors," and "Health Behavior." At the end of the study and once it is evaluated, the goal is to train service provider staff to deliver the intervention to their clients. By collaborating with service providers early on in the intervention study, it will be possible to learn how to tailor the intervention to the specific needs of the agencies involved and the people they serve.