High-risk drug use and sexual behaviors among out-of-treatment drug users: An aging and life course perspective
Section snippets
Background
High-risk drug injection habits and the sexual practices that accompany them are estimated to be responsible for more than one-third of AIDS cases in the United States (Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 2002). These behaviors also facilitate the rapid spread of Hepatitis B and C, and can have devastating effects on the skin, veins, muscles, and joints (Burt et al., 2007, Ebright & Pieper, 2002, Estrada, 2002, Pieper et al., 2007). Drug treatment, and outreach interventions to those not in
Data and methods
The National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) Cooperative Agreement (CA) for AIDS Community-Based Outreach/Intervention Research Program collected data from 1992 to 1998 to evaluate interventions designed to reduce HIV risk behaviors (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). Because of the illegal nature of their behavior, out-of-treatment drug users are difficult to recruit into research studies (Anglin, Caulkins, & Hser, 1993). The current dataset, with 31 088 respondents, is the
Description of the sample
Table 3 presents means and standard deviations, or percentages, of the age and high-risk behavior variables. On average, in the past 30 days participants had sex on 7.8 days, had approximately three different sex partners, traded drugs for sex less than one time, and engaged in 16.2 unprotected sex acts. Fifty-five percent of the sample had injected drugs in the past 30 days. Table 3 also compares non-injectors and injectors. Non-injectors were younger than injectors (35 versus 38 years) but began
Discussion
Our first aim examines the relationship between age and high-risk habits of out-of-treatment drug users. Age is negatively associated with high-risk sex behaviors, and positively associated with high-risk injection behaviors. The former finding is in line with previous research that shows that high-risk sexual behavior decreases with age (Kwiatkowski & Booth, 2003). However, Kwiatkowski and Booth (2003) find that older drug users had fewer injections than younger drug users in the past 30 days,
Role of Funding Source
We would like to acknowledge administrative support from the University of Colorado Boulder, Population Program (The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant R21 HD51146).
Contributors
We would like to acknowledge helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper from Beth Quill. All authors contributed to the development and revisions of the manuscript. William Lopez and Patrick Krueger conducted statistical analyses. The data used herein come from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). NIDA is not responsible for our analyses, interpretation, or conclusions.
Conflict of Interest
No conflict of interest to declare.
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