Current
Staying Safe: Long-Term IDUs Who Avoided HIV & HCV
Funding Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Funding Period: 2005-2011
Principal Investigator: Samuel R. Friedman, Ph.D.
Project Director: Pedro Mateu-Gelabert, Ph.D.
Other Project Staff: Milagros Sandoval (Ethnographic Research and Analysis Coordinator)
While much is known about specific behaviors and the contexts that facilitate HIV and HCV transmission among injection drug users (IDUs), very little is known about the ways in which IDUs remain uninfected over the long term. This project aims to determine the resources, practices and prevention strategies and tactics that help IDUs avoid becoming infected with HIV and HCV, as well as the obstacles they face and how these obstacles are overcome.
Detailed life history interviews will be conducted with long-term current IDUs (injecting 8-15 years) to describe and compare those who are infected with HIV and HCV to those who are not infected with either virus. The interviews will solicit information on: their backgrounds; how they came to use drugs, their strategies to safely obtain and use drugs and to have sex; beliefs about how to remain safe; obstacles they encountered in risk avoidance efforts; patterns and social settings of sexual and drug use behavior practices and networks; and interactions with social networks, families, drug treatment, medical and neighborhood institutions. Based on interview findings, a questionnaire will be developed to measure the tactics, strategies and practices related to remaining uninfected.
The results from the project are expected to provide the basis for developing a new generation of HIV and HCV prevention programs for IDUs who are unable to quit injecting, to develop strategies to avoid infection, as well as improve existing prevention and treatment programming.
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Mateu-Gelabert, P., Sandoval, M., Meylakhs, P., Wendel, T., & Friedman, S. R. (2010). Strategies to avoid opiate withdrawal: Implications for HCV and HIV risks. International Journal of Drug Policy, 21 (3), 179-185.
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Friedman, S. R., Mateu-Gelabert, P., Sandoval, M., Hagan, H., & Des Jarlais, D. C. (2008). Positive deviance control-case life history: A method to develop grounded hypotheses about successful long-term avoidance of infection. BMC Public Health, 8 (1), 94.
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Friedman, S. R., de Jong, W., Rossi, D., Touze, G., Rockwell, R., Des Jarlais, D. C., & Elovich, R. (2007). Harm reduction theory: Users’ culture, micro-social indigenous harm reduction, and the self-organization and outside-organizing of users’ groups. International Journal of Drug Policy, 18 (2), 107-117.
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Mateu-Gelabert, P., Friedman, S., & Sandoval, M. (2007). Pincharse sin infectarse: Estrategias para prevenir la infeccion por el VIH y el VHC entre usuarios de drogas inyectables. Trastornos Adictivos, 9 (4), 260-268.
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Mateu-Gelabert, P., Treloar, C., Calatayud, V. A., Sandoval, M., Zurian, J. C., Maher, L., Rhodes, T., & Friedman, S. R. (2007). How can hepatitis C be prevented in the long term?. International Journal of Drug Policy, 18 (5), 338-340.
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Friedman, S., Rossi, D., & Flom, P. L. (2006). "Big events" and networks. Connections, 27 (1), 9-14.
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