Social Network Interventions for HIV Transmission Elimination
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IMPLEMENTATION SCIENCE (E GENG, SECTION EDITOR)
Social Network Interventions for HIV Transmission Elimination Jade Pagkas-Bather 1,2 & Lindsay E. Young 1,2 & Yen-Tyng Chen 1,2 & John A. Schneider 1,2,3
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Purpose of Review Network interventions for HIV prevention represent a potential area for growth in a globalizing world, where persons are more easily connected to one another through social media and networking applications. The basic tenets of network interventions such as (1) selection of a change agent, (2) segmentation, (3) induction, and (4) alteration represent myriad ways to structure network interventions for HIV prevention with the potential for large public health impact. Recent Findings Recent studies have employed the use of social networking websites such as Facebook to identify key persons to recruit others and disseminate information aimed at decreasing HIV transmission and improving safe sex practices among groups who are more vulnerable to HIV acquisition. Many of these interventions have successfully decreased HIV risk behaviors as well as decreased the spread of HIV among intervention cohorts. Summary Network interventions for HIV prevention provide more opportunities to reach populations who have not been reached through typical efforts employed in clinical and public health settings, though they are not currently widely employed by the public health community and other stakeholders. Keywords HIV . PrEP . Networks . Intervention . Prevention . Sex . MSM
Introduction Social networks as a unit of social structure represent an essential feature of public health and an opportunity for interventionists to engage networks around HIV prevention through network characterization, visualization, analysis, and intervention. The goal of network analysis is to explain the behavior of groups of individuals within their context and the systems and interrelationships that exist as a result of the connections between said groups [1]. Relationships influence a person’s behavior above and beyond the influence of individual attributes [2]. This is particularly true of health behaviors—smoking, eating, and sex are all socially shaped This article is part of the Topical Collection on Implementation Science * Jade Pagkas-Bather [email protected] 1
Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, 5841 South Maryland Avenue, MC 5065, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
2
Chicago Center for HIV Elimination, 5841 South Maryland Avenue, MC 5065, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
3
Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
behaviors [3–5]. Diffusion of information and innovation often occurs through personal networks, which are shaped by geographic, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors [6, 7]. In resource-rich nations, there is evidence that social network factors are critical to the spread of HIV, but most of this research has focused on social relationships instead of probing the specific characteristics of social networks that mediate these outcome
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