1 / 12

Wei Teng, Robert Heimer, Merrill Singer, Tom Stopka, David Buchanan

Variations in Paraphernalia Sharing among IDUs: Do Attitudes of Other IDUs in the Neighborhood Matter?. Wei Teng, Robert Heimer, Merrill Singer, Tom Stopka, David Buchanan The Hispanic Health Council, Hartford, CT; Yale University, New Haven, CT; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.

dillian
Download Presentation

Wei Teng, Robert Heimer, Merrill Singer, Tom Stopka, David Buchanan

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Variations in Paraphernalia Sharing among IDUs: Do Attitudes of Other IDUs in the Neighborhood Matter? Wei Teng, Robert Heimer, Merrill Singer, Tom Stopka, David Buchanan The Hispanic Health Council, Hartford, CT; Yale University, New Haven, CT; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA

  2. The Study Sample • 875 IDUs from 24 neighborhoods in three Northeast cities. • The data were collected through face-to-face interviews using a survey instrument of Syringe Access, Use & Discard Assessment (SAUDA) from December, 1999 through September, 2001.

  3. Measures I • The General Attitude of Other IDUs in the Neighborhood towards Drug-Related HIV Risk Behavior • Measured by 8 items of drug-related HIV risk & protection behavior. • Participants rated the general attitude of other IDUs in their neighborhoods regarding each item on a 5-point scale. • A General Attitude variable was computed based on the mean scores of the 8 items.

  4. Measures II • Drug Injection Paraphernalia Sharing • Indicated by three dichotomous variables of Syringe Sharing, Water Sharing, and Cooker/Cotton Sharing • The three variables were computed based on the number of times in the past 30 days that a participant used a syringe, water to mix up drug, a cooker, or a cotton that had already been used by another IDU.

  5. Variations in the Prevalence of Injection Paraphernalia Sharing Across the Cities

  6. Variations in the Prevalence of Injection Paraphernalia Sharing Across the Neighborhoods

  7. General Attitude of Other IDUs and Injection Paraphernalia Sharing

  8. Binary Logistic Regression Results: Syringe Sharing

  9. Binary Logistic Regression Results: Water Sharing

  10. Binary Logistic Regression Results: Cooker/Cotton Sharing

  11. Summary of the Findings • The prevalence of injection paraphernalia sharing among IDUs varied by neighborhood. • IDUs who did share reported a more accepting attitude towards risky behavior from other IDUs in their neighborhoods. • IDUs’ perception of the attitude of other IDUs in their neighborhoods towards risk behavior was significantly associated with their own recent sharing behavior.

  12. Implications of the Findings • Other IDUs’ attitude towards drug-related HIV risk behavior is an important factor in determining an IDU’s own HIV risk behavior. • AIDS/HIV prevention/education that target on not only individual injection drug users but also local IDUs group and their peer norms should be more effective.

More Related