Mapping HIV risk trajectories from adolescence to young adulthood: a life-course study among unmarried urban Indian youth

ABSTRACT

The study explores trajectories of HIV risks from adolescence to adulthood among unmarried, educated (12+ years of formal education), 20–29 year old youth. Retrospective time event data (n=517) was used to build HIV risk trajectories (age 10 onwards), employing group-based trajectory technique and multinomial logistic regression in SAS v9.4. Among men (n=271), 10% had “Declining risk – high to low”, and 15% had “consistent high risk”. Among women (n=246), 11% had “late-rising risk”, and 15% had “consistent high risk”. Among women, childhood experience of sexual abuse, having self-income, father education until 12th standard, frequent alcohol use predicted higher risk trajectories. Among men, it was an early sexual debut, alcohol dependency in parent/s, non-heterosexual orientation, early sexual debut, and frequent alcohol use. The HIV risk behaviors of unmarried Indian youth are diverse. A subsection engages in high-risk behaviors that change over time and have linkages to developmental factors.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV/AIDS
• adolescent and young people
• HIV risk trajectory
• life course study
• sexual health

Acknowledgments

We thank our data collection team – Maitreyee Kulkarni, Archana Kulkarni, Sanjay Chabukswar, Amar Deogaonkar, Anuj Deshoande for their sensitive and sincere efforts. We thank everyone, including several celebrities, people from educational institutes and workplaces in Pune, who helped us reach out to young people during recruitment. We sincerely thank all our participants for sharing their journeys through extended interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no external funding associated with the work featured in this article.