1. Using Respondent Driven Sampling in a Hidden Population at Risk of HIV Infection: Who do HIV-positive recruiters recruit? DANIELA ABRAMOVITZ, ERIK VOLZ, STEFFANIE A. STRATHDEE, THOMAS L. PATTERSON, AND SIMON D.W. FROST FOR PROYECTO EL CUETE University of California, San Diego, CA, USA Division of International Health and Cross-Cultural Medicine
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Editor's Notes
The topic of this presentation revolves around Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) and its utility in identifying high risk networks.
CONCLUSIONS Compared to recruits of HIV- IDUs, recruits of HIV+ IDUs have larger networks, which means a higher change of being selected into the sample. Also, even though most of them were previously unaware of their HIV status, HIV+ IDUs are more likely to recruit other HIV+ IDUs. Additionally, they are more likely to know someone infected with HIV have unprotected sex with an HIV infected person and test positive for syphilis antibodies. These factors are known to be associated with an increased risk of contacting HIV/AIDS. Implications: The implications of our findings are that Compared to recruits of HIV- IDUs, recruits of HIV+ IDUs have an increased risk of contacting HIV/AIDS. RDS may facilitate identification of individuals with undiagnosed HIV infection as well as identification of high risk networks. This means that RDS has the potential to become a vehicle for network-based interventions. Such interventions may be especially useful in resource-constrained settings with emerging HIV epidemics, like Tijuana, Mexico.
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