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Financial Hardship, Condomless Anal Intercourse and HIV Risk Among Men Who Have Sex with Men

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Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the association between financial hardship, condomless anal intercourse and HIV risk among a sample of men who have sex with men (MSM). Users of a popular geosocial networking application in Paris were shown an advertisement with text encouraging them to complete a anonymous web-based survey (n = 580). In adjusted multivariate models, high financial hardship (compared to low financial hardship) was associated with engagement in condomless anal intercourse (aRR 1.28; 95% CI 1.08–1.52), engagement in condomless receptive anal intercourse (aRR 1.34; 95% CI 1.07–1.67), engagement in condomless insertive anal intercourse (aRR 1.30; 95% CI 1.01–1.67), engagement in transactional sex (aRR 2.36; 95% CI 1.47–3.79) and infection with non-HIV STIs (aRR 1.50; 95% CI 1.07–2.10). This study suggests that interventions to reduce financial hardships (e.g., income-based strategies to ensure meeting of basic necessities) could decrease sexual risk behaviors in MSM.

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Acknowledgements

Dr. Dustin Duncan was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, including R01MH112406, U01PS005122, R21MH110190, and R03DA039748. This work was supported by Dr. Dustin Duncan’s New York University School of Medicine Start-Up Research Fund. We thank the translators and participants of this study who contributed to the project. We thank Noah Kreski for assisting in the development, translation and management of the survey used in the current study. In addition, we thank H. Rhodes Hambrick for conducting some background research used in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Dustin T. Duncan, Su Hyun Park, Yazan A. Al-Ajlouni, William C. Goedel, Brian Elbel & Jace G. Morganstein

  2. Department of Medicine, University of Chicago School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    John A. Schneider

  3. Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Chicago School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    John A. Schneider

  4. New York University Wagner School of Public Service, New York, NY, USA

    Brian Elbel

  5. Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Yusuf Ransome

  6. Fenway Health, The Fenway Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Kenneth H. Mayer

  7. Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Kenneth H. Mayer

  8. Spatial Epidemiology Lab, Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, 227 East 30th Street, 6th Floor, Room 621, New York, NY, 10016, USA

    Dustin T. Duncan

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  1. Dustin T. Duncan
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Correspondence to Dustin T. Duncan.

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Conflicts of interest

Authors Dustin T. Duncan, Su Hyun Park, John A. Schneider, Yazan A. Al-Ajlouni, William C. Goedel, Brian Elbel, Jace G. Morganstein, Yusuf Ransome, and Kenneth H. Mayer declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of our institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

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

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Duncan, D.T., Park, S.H., Schneider, J.A. et al. Financial Hardship, Condomless Anal Intercourse and HIV Risk Among Men Who Have Sex with Men. AIDS Behav 21, 3478–3485 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-017-1930-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-017-1930-3

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