Author ORCID Identifier

Dexter R. Voisin

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-9-2019

Abstract

The interaction between the cumulative effect of psychosocial and structural factors (i.e. syndemic effect) and social networks among young Black transgender women and men who have sex with men (YBTM) remains understudied. A representative cohort of 16–29 year-old YBTM (n = 618) was assessed for syndemic factors [i.e. substance use; community violence; depression; poverty; justice system involvement (JSI)], social network characteristics, condomless anal sex (CAS), group sex (GS), and HIV-infection. The syndemic index significantly increased the odds of CAS, GS, and HIV-infection, and these effects were moderated by network characteristics. Network JSI buffered the effect on CAS, romantic network members buffered the effect on GS, and network age and proportion of family network members buffered the effect on HIV-infection. The proportion of friend network members augmented the effect on GS and HIV-infection. Future research to prevent HIV among YBTM should consider social network approaches that target both structural and psychosocial syndemic factors.

Keywords

black, HIV, MSM, syndemic, transgender women

Publication Title

AIDS and Behavior

Rights

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019

Comments

This is a peer reviewed Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Springer in AIDS and Behavior, available at: 10.1007/s10461-019-02575-9

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