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Low PrEP Awareness and Use Among People Who Inject Drugs, San Francisco, 2018

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Abstract

We examined PrEP awareness and use among people who inject drugs (PWID) in San Francisco in 2018. Of 397 respondents not known to be HIV positive, 56.7% had heard of PrEP, 38.9% knew that PrEP can prevent HIV transmission from sharing injection equipment, 13.6% had discussed PrEP with a health care provider, and 3.0% had used PrEP in the last 12 months. All seven male PWID who had used PrEP were also men who had sex with men. There is urgent need to improve messaging on PrEP’s effectiveness for PWID and to tailor ways of engaging PWID in PrEP programs.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (6NU62PS005077).

Funding

This research was supported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1U1BPS003247, 5U1BPS003247, and 6NU62PS005077).

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Correspondence to Willi McFarland.

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The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

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The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of California San Francisco. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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McFarland, W., Lin, J., Santos, GM. et al. Low PrEP Awareness and Use Among People Who Inject Drugs, San Francisco, 2018. AIDS Behav 24, 1290–1293 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-019-02682-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-019-02682-7

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