Social Networks, Drug Injectors’ Lives, and HIV/AIDS

✍ Scribed by Samuel R. Friedman Ph.D., Richard Curtis Ph.D., Alan Neaigus Ph.D., Benny Jose Ph.D., Don C. Des Jarlais Ph.D. (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 289
• Series: AIDS Prevention and Mental Health
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Social Networks, Drug Injectors' Lives, and HIV/AIDS recognizes HIV as a socially structured disease - its transmission usually requires intimate contact between individuals - and shows how social networks shape high-risk behaviors and the spread of HIV.
The authors recount the groundbreaking use of social network methods, ethnographic direct-observation techniques, and in-depth interviews in their study of a drug-using community in Brooklyn, New York. They provide a detailed documentary of the lives of community members. They describe drug-use, the affects of poverty and homelessness, the acquisition of money and drugs, and social relationships within the group.
Social Networks, Drug Injectors' Lives, and HIV/AIDS shows that social networks and contexts are of crucial importance in understanding and fighting the AIDS epidemic. These findings should revitalize prevention efforts and reshape social policy.

✦ Table of Contents

Introduction....Pages 1-12
Learning from Lives....Pages 13-51
The Drug Scene and Risk Behaviors in Bushwick....Pages 53-86
The Very First Hit....Pages 87-106
Network Concepts and Serosurvey Methods....Pages 107-117
The Research Participants and Their Behaviors....Pages 119-124
Personal Risk Networks and High-Risk Injecting Settings of Drug Injectors....Pages 125-141
Syringe Sharing and the Social Characteristics of Drug-Injecting Dyads....Pages 143-156
Sexual Networks, Condom Use, and the Prospects for HIV Spread to Non-Injection Drug Users....Pages 157-180
Sociometric Networks among Bushwick Drug Injectors....Pages 181-200
Networks and HIV and Other Infections....Pages 201-215
Prevention and Research....Pages 217-238
Appendix....Pages 239-253

✦ Subjects

Public Health/Gesundheitswesen; Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; Infectious Diseases