BACKGROUND: During the past decade in Connecticut, syringe availability has increased through the establishment of exchange programs and legal purchase at pharmacies. Throughout this period, drug injection behaviors and HIV risk have been monitored in New Haven and Hartford in a series of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. METHODS: Drug use behavior, HIV knowledge, and HIV risk have been assessed using structured interviews, all variations on a standardized questionnaire. Although comparison of the questionnaire data across studies relies on cross-sectional analyses, the findings are strengthened by the addition of data from syringe tracking and testing studies and from ethnographic investigations of drug use practices and HIV risk. RESULTS: During the 1990's, there has been a significant improvement in drug users' HIV knowledge both about the disease in general and about injection-related risk. This is correlated with decreases in risky behaviors such as syringe sharing and attendance at shooting galleries. Self-reported decreases in risk are supported by syringe tracking and testing studies which have demonstrated decreases in the prevalence of HIV contaminated syringes from more than 50% to less than 35%. Ethnographic fieldwork has increasingly found that injectors describe their practices in terms of preventing HIV infection. All of the above improvements in HIV risk were temporally associated with the structural changes in the laws designed to increase syringe availability. CONCLUSIONS: Strucutral changes promoting increased availability of sterile syringes can reduce HIV risk and, in turn, reduce the transmission of HIV among drug injectors.
Learning Objectives: This report is part of a session designed to evaluate the changes in injection drug use and infectious disease risk during studies conducted over the decade of the 1990's, focusing on our most recent study "Syringe Access, Use, and Discard: Context in AIDS Risk"
Keywords: Injecting Drug Use, HIV/AIDS
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.