What's in a name ? La construction sociale du risque du sida chez les consommateurs de drogue à Harlem

What's in a Name ?La construction sociale du risque du sidachez les consommateurs de drogue à HarlemCet essai trace l'histoire de vie de cinq personnes vivant à Harlem, une communauté appauvrie caractérisée par des taux élevés d'usage de drogue et de prévalence du VIH/sida ; ces personnes s'injectent toutes de la drogue par voie intraveineuse. Chaque portrait tente de documenter la façon dont est perçu le risque de l'infection par le VIH relativement à d'autres sortes de danger, ainsi que la manière dont ce risque est géré face à d'autres types de besoin. L'article explore la signification de ces correspondances, les situe dans le tissu social global de la communauté, notamment par rapport à la pauvreté, et en étudie les conséquences pour l'intervention en matière de sida.What's in a Name ?The Social Construction of Riskfor AIDS in the Moral Imaginationof IV Drug Users in HarlemThis essay profiles the life stories of five individuals from Harlem in New York City, an impoverished community with high levels of drug use and HIV seroprevalence. AU are intravenous drug users, and each profile is concerned with documenting the way in which risk for HIV infection is perceived relative to other kinds of dangers, as well as the way it is managed relative to other kinds of needs. The paper explores the significance of thèse correspondences, locales thèse ideas within the larger social fabric of the community, particularly as they relate to poverty, and explores the implications of thèse correspondences for AIDS intervention

Recruitment of heterosexual couples in public health research: a study protocol

BACKGROUND: Public health research involving social or kin groups (such as sexual partners or family members), rather than samples of unrelated individuals, has become more widespread in response to social ecological approaches to disease treatment and prevention. This approach requires the development of innovative sampling, recruitment and screening methodologies tailored to the study of related individuals. METHODS: In this paper, we describe a set of sampling, recruitment and screening protocols developed to enlist urban, drug-using, heterosexual couples into a public health research study. This population is especially hard to reach because they are engaged in illegal and/or stigmatized behaviors. The protocols were designed to integrate adaptive sampling, street- and referral-based recruitment, and screening procedures to verify study eligibility and relationship status. DISCUSSION: Recruitment of heterosexual couples through one partner, preferably the female, can be an effective enlistment technique. Verification of relationship status is an important component of dyadic research. Comparison of parallel questionnaires administered to each member of a dyad can aid in the assessment of relationship status. However, multiple independent sources of information should be used to verify relationship status when available. Adaptive sampling techniques were effective in reaching drug-using heterosexual couples in an urban setting, and the application of these methods to other groups of related individuals in clinical and public health research may prove to be useful. However, care must be taken to consider potential sources of sampling bias when interpreting and generalizing study results

Recruiting Injection Drug Users: A Three-Site Comparison of Results and Experiences with Respondent-Driven and Targeted Sampling Procedures

Several recent studies have utilized respondent-driven sampling (RDS) methods to survey hidden populations such as commercial sex-workers, men who have sex with men (MSM) and injection drug users (IDU). Few studies, however, have provided a direct comparison between RDS and other more traditional sampling methods such as venue-based, targeted or time/space sampling. The current study sampled injection drug users in three U.S. cities using RDS and targeted sampling (TS) methods and compared their effectiveness in terms of recruitment efficiency, logistics, and sample demographics. Both methods performed satisfactorily. The targeted method required more staff time per-recruited respondent and had a lower proportion of screened respondents who were eligible than RDS, while RDS respondents were offered higher incentives for participation

Predictors of HIV Infection Among Women Drug Users in New York and Miami

In the US, the number of women diagnosed with AIDS continues to increase. In this study, women in New York City (East Harlem) and Miami, two sites with high rates of drug use and HIV infection, were first compared on sociodemographic variables and risk behaviors. Logistic regression analyses were used to identify significant, independent predictors of HIV infection in each city. In comparing women from the two cities, several differences in sociodemographic characteristics and drug use were observed. In both cities, ever exchanging sex for drugs and/or money was predictive of HIV infection; and in East Harlem only, other lifetime risk variables independently predicted HIV infection: drug injection, having a sexually transmitted disease, and not having graduated from high school. Results suggest that intervention efforts with women who exchange sex should be intensified in both cities. Also, further comparisons of women drug users in AIDS epicenter cities are necessary to provide information on similarities and differences in sociodemographic characteristics and individual risk behaviors. More research attention should be focused on examining the social context of HIV risk in order to develop innovative intervention strategies which focus on the link between contextual factors and HIV infection