The Interaction of Human Social Systems and Virus Natural History in the Non-Spreading of HIV

• In Event: 343 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Chronic Health Conditions

Abstract

In the early years of the epidemic, HIV prevalence among people who inject drugs (PWID) was known to stabilize at rates well below saturation, despite the ongoing presence of new infections, high levels of risk behavior, and the ostensibly “small world” nature of the risk networks involved. Speculation on the ability of “network firewalls” to limit HIV spread advanced by Friedman and colleagues remain largely untested. This paper describes the use of structured agent-based simulation to test this idea, and show that self-organized networks of PWID (following connection tendencies from data on PWID in New York City in the early 1990s) could produce stabilized prevalence. The same simulation networks are then explored for sensitivity to changes in actor behavior. Implications for policy and disease prevention are described.

Authors

• Kirk Dombrowski, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Bilal Khan, City University of New York-John Jay College