HIV and Substance Abuse Epidemiology among IDUs: Structural and Network Risk

April Young, Ph.D., M.P.H. (Collaborator) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky. She has extensive experience collecting and processing sociometric network data through her involvement in an ongoing network-based study of HIV, herpes, and hepatitis C risk among drug users in Eastern Kentucky ("SNAP" study; R01 DA024598). Dr. Young’s work in Appalachia used a personal network inventory (similar to the one used in this study) to elicit the names of social support, sex, and drug network members and collect demographic, behavioral, and relational characteristics about each network member named. In SNAP, sociometric networks were constructed by cross-referencing the names and demographics of the network members listed in the personal network inventory with those of other study participants and the network members named by other study participants. To assist with this cross-referencing process, Dr. Young developed a semi-automated procedure which has been applied to six waves of follow-up data from the SNAP study and will be adapted for application to this study (K01 DA033879; PI: Rudolph). Using the tool she developed streamlined the tie confirmation process for the SNAP study, as it was able to quickly process self-reported network data, accurately identify matches, and export a de-identified sociometric network. Figure 1 depicts the process that will be used to confirm ties in this study. Figure 1. Flow Diagram for Network Data Processing *SPSS Syntax already written To date, Dr. Young has co-authored over thirty publications on various aspects of risk behavior related to HIV, HCV, sexually transmitted infections, and/or drug use, including nine that specifically examine network-level and dyadic factors related to HIV, HCV, drug use, preventive intervention, and study recruitment patterns. Dr. Young is therefore uniquely qualified to consult on the management and construction of the sociometric network data in Year 4 and collaborate on final analyses that use the resulting network in Year 5.