Characteristics of Female Sex Workers in Southern India Willing and Unwilling to Participate in a Placebo Gel Trial

Respondent-Driven Sampling was used to recruit female sex workers (FSWs) for a community survey conducted in southern India. After survey completion, participants were given a brochure describing a clinical trial that entailed daily use of a placebo vaginal gel for four months. This study assessed predictors of screening among survey respondents, predictors of enrollment among those eligible for the trial, and predictors of visit attendance and retention among those enrolled. FSWs who reported STI symptoms, engaging in sex work in the past month, and living in a subdistrict easily accessible by public transportation with a high concentration of FSWs, were more likely to screen. FSWs never before tested for HIV were more likely to enroll. This analysis suggests that the primary reason FSWs participated in the trial was a desire for health care—not other factors hypothesized to be important, e.g., HIV risk perception and poverty status

Using a 2-Stage Strategy with Respondent-Driven Sampling to Recruit a Hard-to-Reach Population for a Placebo Microbicide Gel Clinical Trial in Nellore, Andhra Pradesh (India)

Traditional recruitment methods for microbicide efficacy trials are labor intensive and may fail to reach high-risk hard-to-reach populations. We report duration of recruitment and lessons learned from a two-stage process to recruit female sex workers (FSWs) into a placebo microbicide trial, and examined characteristics associated with successful recruitment of peers who screened for and enrolled in the trial. FSWs were first recruited via respondent-driven sampling (RDS) to complete a survey and subsequently invited to screen for enrollment into a placebo microbicide trial taking place at a local clinic. It took 6 months to enroll 267 participants into the trial. Successful recruiters of peers who enrolled were more likely to have enrolled themselves (AOR 2.0, CI 1.3–2.9) and less likely to visit Nellore city (AOR 0.5, CI 0.3–0.9). Recruitment of FSWs via a two-stage recruitment strategy with RDS can be a good option for future clinical trials

Subjective Well-being Among Those Who Exchange Sex and Money, Yunnan, China and Thailand

Happiness, China, Thailand, Sex workers, Drugs,