Personal social networks and HIV status among women on methadone

This objective of this study was to examine the association between a woman 's HIV status and specific (IDUs) characteristics of her social networks wi th respect to (1) number of injection drug users (2) number of drug partner s and (3) number of HIV-positive contacts in her personal networks, after c ontrolling for the respondent's demographic characteristics and drug use. P articipants were recruited through posted announcements in three methadone clinics in Harlem, New York City. Individuals were considered eligible if t hey, were enrolled as patients in one of the clinics for at least three mon ths. A social network questionnaire modeled after the General Social Survey network section was developed by the investigators. Face-to-face interview s were conducted by trained interviewers and included demographics, drug us e, self-reported HIV statics of the woman and her network members, and the social network structures. Univariate analyses found that HIV-positive and HIV-negative women had different network profiles. HIV-positive women were more likely to associate with a higher number of current drug users, inject ion drug users, injection drug users who were HIV-positive, drug partners, drug partners who used injection drugs, and drug partners who were HIV-posi tive. Multivariate analyses indicated that HIV-positive respondents were mo re likely to associate with HIV-positive network members than their HIV-neg ative counterparts.;The findings suggest that to better understand the spre ad of HIV among female drug users and to design more effective HIV/AIDS pre vention programmes, efforts should move beyond focusing on individual attri butes to address the contextual dynamics of social networks.