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Network Research Experiences in New York and Eastern Europe: Lessons for the Southern US in Understanding HIV Transmission Dynamics

  • The Global Epidemic (SH Vermund, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

This paper presents an overview of different kinds of risk and social network methods and the kinds of research questions each can address.

Recent Findings

It also reviews what network research has discovered about how network characteristics are associated with HIV and other infections, risk behaviors, preventive behaviors, and care, and discusses some ways in which network-based public health interventions have been conducted.

Summary

Based on this, risk and social network research and interventions seem both feasible and valuable for addressing the many public health and social problems raised by the widespread use of opioids in the US South.

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Notes

  1. A Seidman k-core is defined as a set of members of the network (plus their links) such that every member of the k-core is linked by k or more links to another k-core member. Any given connected component can have only one 2-core, but many 3-cores or 4-cores. A 3-core will have to be a part of a 2-core, a 4-core will have to be part of a 3-core, and so forth. There are many measures that have been developed to measure the properties of social networks. Any edition of Wasserman, Stanley, and Faust, Katherine, Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences), (First Edition 1994) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, West 20th St., New York, USA, Melbourne, Madrid, ISBN 978-0521387071 is a good reference for such measures.

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Funding

This research was supported by the United States (US) National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) grants DP1 DA034989, P30DA011041, R01 DA033862, R01 DA024598, R01 DA035146, K01DA041259, and UG3 DA044829. The funding source had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Development and Research Institutes, Inc., New York, NY, USA

    Samuel R. Friedman, Leslie Williams, Jennifer Teubl, Pedro Mateu-Gelabert & Honoria Guarino

  2. Department of Epidemiology, University of Kentucky College of Public Health, Lexington, KY, USA

    April M. Young

  3. Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Dimitrios Paraskevis & Evangelia Kostaki

  4. Department of Health, Behavior, and Society, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Carl Latkin & Danielle German

  5. Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Tetyana I. Vasylyeva

  6. Division of Global Public Health, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

    Britt Skaathun

  7. Department of Medicine and Center for HIV Elimination, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    John Schneider

  8. Alliance for Public Health, Kyiv, Ukraine

    Ania Korobchuk & Pavlo Smyrnov

  9. Medical School, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Georgios Nikolopoulos

Authors
  1. Samuel R. Friedman
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  2. Leslie Williams
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  3. April M. Young
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  11. Tetyana I. Vasylyeva
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  12. Britt Skaathun
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  13. John Schneider
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  16. Georgios Nikolopoulos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Samuel R. Friedman.

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Conflict of Interest

Britt Skaathun is supported by NIH Research Training Grant #T32AI7384-26.

John Schneider is supported by National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease grant R01 AI120700.

Tetyana I Vasylyeva is supported by the Clarendon Fund and Hertford College of the University of Oxford.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

All of the studies by any of the authors for which data are presented were approved by the appropriate Institutional Review Boards and all participants gave informed consent.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on The Global Epidemic

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Friedman, S.R., Williams, L., Young, A.M. et al. Network Research Experiences in New York and Eastern Europe: Lessons for the Southern US in Understanding HIV Transmission Dynamics. Curr HIV/AIDS Rep 15, 283–292 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11904-018-0403-2

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