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.
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).