ABSTRACT
Nonheterosexually identified (NHI) women may be present, but not accounted for, in HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention interventions. This study used quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the sexual risk behaviors and intervention needs of NHI women in Protect and Respect, a safer sex intervention for HIV-positive women. Study participants (n = 32) were predominantly Black, low income, and between 28 and 51 years old. Although NHI participants were more likely than heterosexual participants (p< .05) to report obtaining their income from sex work, hustling, or selling drugs; and having a higher median number of male sex partners, qualitative analyses revealed that the intervention often neglected NHI women's experiences and unique safer sex needs. Heterosexist HIV and STI prevention programs may hinder NHI women's ability to protect themselves and their partners from reinfection and infection respectively. We discuss the implications of our research for future HIV/AIDS and STI research, services and interventions for NHI women.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the project participants for sharing information about their lives and risk practices; the Partnership clinic for their support; Mary Ann Nkansa, Dianne Rorie, and Rhonda Ferguson for their dedication to the project; and their project officers at EPPEC and HRSA including Faye Malitz, Sandra Duggan, Janet Myers, and Kim Koester.
This research is supported by grant number 03048 from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Program. This article's contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the official view of HRSA or the SPNS program.
Notes
*p-value based on Fisher's Exact.
*p-value based on Fisher's Exact.
1. Primary prevention includes strategies to prevent women from acquiring HIV and other STIs. Secondary prevention includes strategies to help women who are already living with HIV/AIDS to protect themselves from acquiring STIs or other strains of HIV and to protect their partners from HIV or STI transmission
2. Researchers use different terms to describe nonheterosexual women, including WSW (women who have sex with women), lesbians and bisexual women, women who have sex with men and women (WSMW) and sexual minority women. These terms are used interchangeably at times throughout this article. We describe our study and present our data using the term NHI. In using the term NHI we do not intend to establish heterosexual women as the norm; we use the term NHI rather than WSW, lesbian, or bisexual women because it most accurately reflects the way sexual orientation was measured in our data.
3. All names are pseudonyms.