As part of the development of the Engaging Microenterprise for Resource Generation and Health Empowerment (EMERGE) Project, the study team will conduct a single-group study to examine the feasibility of assessing economic and sexual risk behaviors using text messages. The team will enroll approximately 20 young adults, aged 18 to 24, who are African-American, homeless, out-of-school, and un/under-employed. Participants will complete a text-messaged survey each week for 5 weeks. The study team will collect information about the number of participants who respond to the weekly survey, the number of questions to which they respond in each survey, and the number of hours from sending a survey to participants to receiving their response. As an exploratory aim, participants will also receive 3 informational text messages each week for 5 weeks on HIV prevention and economic empowerment. The study team will obtain qualitative feedback from participants regarding text messages they most and least liked. The survey is not designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the text message intervention.

As part of the development of the Engaging Microenterprise for Resource Generation and Health Empowerment (EMERGE) Project, the study team will conduct a single-group study to examine the feasibility of assessing economic and sexual risk behaviors using text messages. The study team will enroll approximately 20 young adults, aged 18 to 24, who are African-American, homeless, out-of-school, and un/under-employed. Participants will complete a text-messaged survey each week for 5 weeks. The study team will collect information about the number of participants who respond to the weekly survey, the number of questions to which they respond in each survey, and the number of hours from sending a survey to participants to receiving their response. As an exploratory aim, participants will also receive 3 informational text messages each week for 5 weeks on HIV prevention and economic empowerment. The study team will obtain qualitative feedback from participants regarding text messages they most and least liked. The survey is not designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the text message intervention. The single-group study is anticipated to start in August 2017.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Individuals will be included in the study if, at the time of enrollment, they are:
• African American
• Aged 18-24
• Living in Baltimore City
• Experiencing homelessness in the past 12 months
• Employed fewer than 10 hours per week
• Not enrolled in school
• Ownership of a mobile phone with text-messaging capacity
• Reporting at least one episode of unprotected sex in prior 6 months or one other personal or sexual partner HIV risk factor within prior 6 months (STI diagnosis, sex while high or drunk, sex exchange, illicit drug use, alcohol dependence).

Exclusion Criteria:

• Aged 17 or younger.
• Older than 24 years
• Unwilling to provide consent for study participation

All de-identified IPD that underlie results in a publication will be shared.

De-identified individual patient data (IPD) that under results in a publication will become available 12 months after publication and will be available for 24 months.

Sponsor approval for data sharing will be sought. Only bona fide research groups are eligible to access data as evidenced via curriculum vitae (CV) and the involvement of a qualified statistician or qualitative research scientist. Data access requests should be made via email application to the principal investigator detailing the specific requirements and the proposed research and publication plan. Data access requests will be reviewed against specific criteria by the data custodians. Decisions about requests will be made promptly and no more than 3 months after receipt of request.

Number of participants enrolled in the study

5 weeks

Any untoward or unfavorable medical occurrence in a participant, including any abnormal sign (for example, abnormal physical exam or laboratory finding), symptom, or disease, temporally associated with the participant's participation in the research, whether or not considered related to the participant's participation in the research.