Rural and urban injection drug use in Puerto Rico: Network implications for human immunodeficiency virus and hepatitis C virus infection

ABSTRACT

Understanding the short- and long-term transmission dynamics of blood-borne illnesses in network contexts represents an important public health priority for people who inject drugs and the general population that surrounds them. The purpose of this article is to compare the risk networks of urban and rural people who inject drugs in Puerto Rico. In the current study, network characteristics are drawn from the sampling “trees” used to recruit participants to the study. We found that injection frequency is the only factor significantly related to clustering behavior among both urban and rural people who inject drugs.

KEYWORDS:

• HCV
• HIV
• injection drug users
• network affiliation
• RDS

Acknowledgment

The authors acknowledge Gabriela Paz-Bailey (MD, PhD, MSc, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and Melissa Cribbin (MPH, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) for collecting and sharing the NHBS San Juan IDU3 data set with us.