Desired Social Distance From People Who Have Hepatitis C Virus: An Exploration Among Staff in Health Care, Dentistry, Drug Treatment, and Tattoo/Body Piercing

Abstract

Staff who work in facilities such as health care, dentistry, drug treatment, and tattoo/body piercing are likely to encounter persons with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and be privy to their HCV status. The purpose of this paper is to assess staff comfort with varying levels of intimacy (i.e., social distance) with people who have HCV. We examine how previous contact with persons with HCV and knowledge of HCV including HCV specific training affect desire for social distance. Data are from a 2007 sample of 82 individuals working in health care, dentistry, drug treatment, or tattoo/body-piercing studios located in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Multivariate analyses indicate that staff desire social distance from persons with HCV, but contact of certain types reduce desire for social distance. We discuss how the findings have implications for people employed in these fields, as they point to the need to dispel myths and reduce fear among staff working in facilities that may serve persons with HCV.

Keywords :

• social distance
• hepatitis
• contact
• knowledge
• stigma
• healthcare providers
• drug treatment
• dentistry
• tattoos

THE AUTHORS

Alicia Suarez, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at DePauw University. Her general research interests are medical sociology, deviance, gender, and sexuality. She specifically has researched illness experience with hepatitis C virus and is currently working of research regarding the practice of midwifery in illegal U.S. states.

Deidre Redmond, PhD, completed her doctoral studies at Indiana University. Her doctoral thesis analyzed the effects of adult children's stressors on the psychological well-being of their middle-aged parents. Redmond is now an assistant professor at Murray State University (USA). Research interests: medical sociology, mental illness, stress, family, and social psychology.

Notes

1 Sexual transmission of HCV among monogamous, heterosexual couples is incredibly low with most research on Western couples finding rates between 1% and 5% (Terrault, 2005).

2 We conducted additional analyses (available upon request) to test for the interaction between contact and knowledge. First, we found that contact decreased desire for social distance in regards to a child's caretaker; in no other instance did the general indicator of contact predict desire for social distance, net of controls. Second, we did not find in this case that knowledge mediated the effect of contact on comfort hiring a caretaker who has HCV. In other words, the effect of contact on desire for social distance was the same at varying levels of knowledge. This was not surprising given that there was not much variance in how they scored on the knowledge measure.