Community acceptance and implementation of HIV prevention interventions for injection drug users

In 1997, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reviewed evidence of the effectiveness of HIV prevention programs for injection drug users (IDUs) and recommended that three types ofinterventions be implemented to prevent transmission of HIV among IDUs: 1) community-based outreach, 2) expanded syringe access (including needle exchange programs [NEP] and pharmacy sales), and 3) drug treatment. Progress on increasing the acceptance and feasibility of implementing these programs has been made at the national level, but their implementation has been varied at the local level.Understanding the conditions under which communities accept and implement interventions can help guide effective strategies to foster the implementation of these interventions in areas where programs do not currently exist

Sex trading and psychological distress among women recruited from the streets of Harlem

Objectives: This study examines the relationship between sex trading and psychological distress and the implications of that relationship for prevention of human immunodeficiency virus among a sample of young women recruited from the streets of Harlem. Methods: Interviews were conducted with 346 predominantly drug-using women, aged 18 to 29 years, of whom 176 had exchanged sex for money or drugs in the previous 30 days and were categorized as "sex traders." Psychological distress was measured by using the Brief Symptom Inventory. Results: Sex traders scored significantly higher than non-sex traders on the General Severity Index and on eight of the nine subscales of the Brief Symptom Inventory. Multivariate analysis indicated that after adjustments were made for age; ethnicity; pregnancy; recent rape; perceived risk for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome; current, regular crack use; and current, regular alcohol use, sex traders scored 0.240 units higher on the General Severity Index than non-sex traders. Conclusions: Poor mental health and drug dependence may under-mine the motivation and ability of these sex traders to adopt safer sex behavior. Therefore, interventions need to be integrated with mental health services and drug treatment to reduce risk behavior in this population

Reinterpreting Ethnic Patterns among White and African American Men Who Inject Heroin: A Social Science of Medicine Approach

BACKGROUND: Street-based heroin injectors represent an especially vulnerable population group subject to negative health outcomes and social stigma. Effective clinical treatment and public health intervention for this population requires an understanding of their cultural environment and experiences. Social science theory and methods offer tools to understand the reasons for economic and ethnic disparities that cause individual suffering and stress at the institutional level. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We used a cross-methodological approach that incorporated quantitative, clinical, and ethnographic data collected by two contemporaneous long-term San Francisco studies, one epidemiological and one ethnographic, to explore the impact of ethnicity on street-based heroin-injecting men 45 years of age or older who were self-identified as either African American or white. We triangulated our ethnographic findings by statistically examining 14 relevant epidemiological variables stratified by median age and ethnicity. We observed significant differences in social practices between self-identified African Americans and whites in our ethnographic social network sample with respect to patterns of (1) drug consumption; (2) income generation; (3) social and institutional relationships; and (4) personal health and hygiene. African Americans and whites tended to experience different structural relationships to their shared condition of addiction and poverty. Specifically, this generation of San Francisco injectors grew up as the children of poor rural to urban immigrants in an era (the late 1960s through 1970s) when industrial jobs disappeared and heroin became fashionable. This was also when violent segregated inner city youth gangs proliferated and the federal government initiated its “War on Drugs.” African Americans had earlier and more negative contact with law enforcement but maintained long-term ties with their extended families. Most of the whites were expelled from their families when they began engaging in drug-related crime. These historical-structural conditions generated distinct presentations of self. Whites styled themselves as outcasts, defeated by addiction. They professed to be injecting heroin to stave off “dopesickness” rather than to seek pleasure. African Americans, in contrast, cast their physical addiction as an oppositional pursuit of autonomy and pleasure. They considered themselves to be professional outlaws and rejected any appearance of abjection. Many, but not all, of these ethnographic findings were corroborated by our epidemiological data, highlighting the variability of behaviors within ethnic categories. CONCLUSIONS: Bringing quantitative and qualitative methodologies and perspectives into a collaborative dialog among cross-disciplinary researchers highlights the fact that clinical practice must go beyond simple racial or cultural categories. A clinical social science approach provides insights into how sociocultural processes are mediated by historically rooted and institutionally enforced power relations. Recognizing the logical underpinnings of ethnically specific behavioral patterns of street-based injectors is the foundation for cultural competence and for successful clinical relationships. It reduces the risk of suboptimal medical care for an exceptionally vulnerable and challenging patient population. Social science approaches can also help explain larger-scale patterns of health disparities; inform new approaches to structural and institutional-level public health initiatives; and enable clinicians to take more leadership in changing public policies that have negative health consequences

Temporal changes in HCV genotype distribution in three different high risk populations in San Francisco, California

Abstract Background Hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype (GT) has become an important measure in the diagnosis and monitoring of HCV infection treatment. In the United States (U.S.) HCV GT 1 is reported as the most common infecting GT among chronically infected patients. In Europe, however, recent studies have suggested that the epidemiology of HCV GTs is changing. Methods We assessed HCV GT distribution in 460 patients from three HCV-infected high risk populations in San Francisco, and examined patterns by birth cohort to assess temporal trends. Multiple logistic regression was used to assess factors independently associated with GT 1 infection compared to other GTs (2, 3, and 4). Results Overall, GT 1 was predominant (72.4%), however younger injection drug users (IDU) had a lower proportion of GT 1 infections (54.7%) compared to older IDU and HIV-infected patients (80.5% and 76.6%, respectively). Analysis by birth cohort showed increasing proportions of non-GT 1 infections associated with year of birth: birth before 1970 was independently associated with higher adjusted odds of GT 1: AOR 2.03 (95% CI: 1.23, 3.34). African-Americans as compared to whites also had higher adjusted odds of GT 1 infection (AOR: 3.37; 95% CI: 1.89, 5.99). Conclusions Although, HCV GT 1 remains the most prevalent GT, especially among older groups, changes in GT distribution could have significant implications for how HCV might be controlled on a population level and treated on an individual level

Estimating past hepatitis C infection risk from reported risk factor histories: implications for imputing age of infection and modeling fibrosis progression

BackgroundChronic hepatitis C virus infection is prevalent and often causes hepatic fibrosis, which can progress to cirrhosis and cause liver cancer or liver failure. Study of fibrosis progression often relies on imputing the time of infection, often as the reported age of first injection drug use. We sought to examine the accuracy of such imputation and implications for modeling factors that influence progression rates.MethodsWe analyzed cross-sectional data on hepatitis C antibody status and reported risk factor histories from two large studies, the Women’s Interagency HIV Study and the Urban Health Study, using modern survival analysis methods for current status data to model past infection risk year by year. We compared fitted distributions of past infection risk to reported age of first injection drug use.ResultsAlthough injection drug use appeared to be a very strong risk factor, models for both studies showed that many subjects had considerable probability of having been infected substantially before or after their reported age of first injection drug use. Persons reporting younger age of first injection drug use were more likely to have been infected after, and persons reporting older age of first injection drug use were more likely to have been infected before.ConclusionsIn studies of fibrosis progression, modern methods such as multiple imputation should be used to account for the substantial uncertainty about when infection occurred. The models presented here can provide the inputs needed by such methods. Using reported age of first injection drug use as the time of infection in studies of fibrosis progression is likely to produce a spuriously strong association of younger age of infection with slower rate of progression

Toward a More Accurate Estimate of the Prevalence of Hepatitis C in the United States

Data from the 2003-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) indicate that about 3.6 million people in the United States have antibodies to the hepatitis C virus, of whom 2.7 million are currently infected. NHANES, however, excludes several high-risk populations from its sampling frame, including people who are incarcerated, homeless, or hospitalized; nursing home residents; active-duty military personnel; and people living on Indian reservations.We undertook a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature and sought out unpublished presentations and data to estimate the prevalence of hepatitis C in these excluded populations and in turn improve the estimate of the number of people with hepatitis C in the United States. The available data do not support a precise result, but we estimated that 1.0 million (range 0.4 million-1.8 million) persons excluded from the NHANES sampling frame have hepatitis C virus antibody, including 500,000 incarcerated people, 220,000 homeless people, 120,000 people living on Indian reservations, and 75,000 people in hospitals. Most are men. An estimated 0.8 million (range 0.3 million-1.5 million) are currently infected. Several additional sources of underestimation, including nonresponse bias and the underrepresentation of other groups at increased risk of hepatitis C that are not excluded from the NHANES sampling frame, were not addressed in this study. Conclusion: The number of US residents who have been infected with hepatitis C is unknown but is probably at least 4.6 million (range 3.4 million-6.0 million), and of these, at least 3.5 million (range 2.5 million-4.7 million) are currently infected; additional sources of potential underestimation suggest that the true prevalence could well be higher

Community Characteristics Associated with HIV Risk among Injection Drug Users in the San Francisco Bay Area: A Multilevel Analysis

Community characteristics have been associated with racial and ethnic health disparities for a wide range of ailments and conditions. Previous research has found that rates of AIDS cases among injection drug users (IDUs) vary by community characteristics. However, few studies have examined whether community characteristics are associated with HIV risk behaviors among IDUs. To address this gap in the literature, we examined the associations between census-tract-level community characteristics and injection-related and sex-related HIV risk behaviors among IDUs in the San Francisco Bay Area. Individual HIV risk behaviors were collected from 4,956 IDUs between 1998 and 2002. Using 2000 US census data, we constructed four census-level community measures: percent African American, percent male unemployment, percent of households that receive public assistance, and median household income. All community variables were measured continuously. Multilevel modeling was used to determine if community characteristics were associated with recent (in the last 6 months) receptive and distributive syringe sharing, multiple sex partners, and unprotected sex risk while controlling for potential individual-level confounders. In bivariate analysis, most of the census-tract-level community characteristics were significantly associated with injection-related HIV risk, while no community characteristics were associated with sex-related risk. However, results from multivariate multilevel models indicate that only percent African American in a census tract was associated with receptive [adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 0.93; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.89, 0.99] and distributive syringe sharing (AOR = 0.94; 95% CI = 0.92, 0.99), net of individual-level characteristics. Accounting for individual-level factors in the multivariate model in the sex-related risk models revealed a significant inverse relationship between percent African American and propensity to engage in unprotected sex (AOR = 0.95; 95% CI = 0.92, 0.99); community-level characteristics remained unassociated with multiple sex partners. In this exploratory analysis, percent African American in a census tract was inversely associated with injection-related risk. The census-tract-level community characteristics we examined seem to exert little influence on individual risk among long-term chronic IDUs. More research is needed examining the influence of other community characteristics that were unmeasured in this paper but might be related to sex and drug risk among IDUs such as shooting galleries, crack houses, drug markets, and availability of preventive HIV services

Reinterpreting Ethnic Patterns among White and African American Men Who Inject Heroin: A Social Science of Medicine Approach

BackgroundStreet-based heroin injectors represent an especially vulnerable population group subject to negative health outcomes and social stigma. Effective clinical treatment and public health intervention for this population requires an understanding of their cultural environment and experiences. Social science theory and methods offer tools to understand the reasons for economic and ethnic disparities that cause individual suffering and stress at the institutional level.Methods and FindingsWe used a cross-methodological approach that incorporated quantitative, clinical, and ethnographic data collected by two contemporaneous long-term San Francisco studies, one epidemiological and one ethnographic, to explore the impact of ethnicity on street-based heroin-injecting men 45 years of age or older who were self-identified as either African American or white. We triangulated our ethnographic findings by statistically examining 14 relevant epidemiological variables stratified by median age and ethnicity. We observed significant differences in social practices between self-identified African Americans and whites in our ethnographic social network sample with respect to patterns of (1) drug consumption; (2) income generation; (3) social and institutional relationships; and (4) personal health and hygiene. African Americans and whites tended to experience different structural relationships to their shared condition of addiction and poverty. Specifically, this generation of San Francisco injectors grew up as the children of poor rural to urban immigrants in an era (the late 1960s through 1970s) when industrial jobs disappeared and heroin became fashionable. This was also when violent segregated inner city youth gangs proliferated and the federal government initiated its “War on Drugs.” African Americans had earlier and more negative contact with law enforcement but maintained long-term ties with their extended families. Most of the whites were expelled from their families when they began engaging in drug-related crime. These historical-structural conditions generated distinct presentations of self. Whites styled themselves as outcasts, defeated by addiction. They professed to be injecting heroin to stave off “dopesickness” rather than to seek pleasure. African Americans, in contrast, cast their physical addiction as an oppositional pursuit of autonomy and pleasure. They considered themselves to be professional outlaws and rejected any appearance of abjection. Many, but not all, of these ethnographic findings were corroborated by our epidemiological data, highlighting the variability of behaviors within ethnic categories. ConclusionsBringing quantitative and qualitative methodologies and perspectives into a collaborative dialog among cross-disciplinary researchers highlights the fact that clinical practice must go beyond simple racial or cultural categories. A clinical social science approach provides insights into how sociocultural processes are mediated by historically rooted and institutionally enforced power relations. Recognizing the logical underpinnings of ethnically specific behavioral patterns of street-based injectors is the foundation for cultural competence and for successful clinical relationships. It reduces the risk of suboptimal medical care for an exceptionally vulnerable and challenging patient population. Social science approaches can also help explain larger-scale patterns of health disparities; inform new approaches to structural and institutional-level public health initiatives; and enable clinicians to take more leadership in changing public policies that have negative health consequences