Sexual partner concurrency: is it a useful concept for HIV prevention? A systematic review of the evidence for intervention effectiveness in low- and middle-income countries

ABSTRACT

If sexual partner concurrency drives HIV transmission dynamics, shouldn’t HIV prevention efforts be addressing this behavior? We systematically reviewed studies evaluating interventions to reduce sexual partner concurrency in low- and middle-income countries using pre/post or multi-arm designs. Only two studies met our inclusion criteria; neither found significant differences by intervention exposure on self-reported concurrency. Overall, very few interventions have specifically targeted concurrency, and those that did have not been rigorously evaluated. In practice, concurrency may be difficult to separate from multiple partnerships more generally.

KEYWORDS:

• Concurrent sexual partners
• concurrency
• HIV
• systematic review

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our research assistants, Avani Duggaraju, Lasanthi Fernando, Priyanka Mysore, and Joseph Greg Rosen, who conducted primary screening of citations and abstracts and searched USAID-funded programs’ websites for interventions related to concurrency. We would also like to thank Martina Morris for her helpful input in identifying articles.

Data availability statement

All data are publicly available from the peer-reviewed articles cited in this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the US National Institute of Mental Health, grant number R01MH090173.