Men who have sex with men (MSM) who use methamphetamine experience high risks for HIV infection due to sexual transmission behaviors often engaged in when under the influence of methamphetamine. Methamphetamine-using MSM use various forms of information technology (IT) communication such as instant messaging, social networking sites, and websites to facilitate a sexual and/or drug "hook up." Gi...

Most worksite health promotion programs are designed to effect risk reduction. Net changes in the prevalence of health behaviors are a combination of individuals who reduce to low-risk and those who become high-risk. It is the purpose of this study to examine overall risk status transitions, between low-risk (0-2 risks); medium-risk (3-4 risks); and high-risk (5 or more risks), within a compreh...

OBJECTIVE We explore the impact of antiretroviral therapy (ART) on partnership acquisition and dissolution rates and changes in sexual behaviours among HIV-infected adults. DESIGN Using detailed longitudinal data from a prospective cohort of HIV-infected adults with CD4 cell count below 200 cells/μl (ART-eligible) or CD4 cell count above 500 cells/μl (pre-ART) conducted in rural KwaZulu-Natal...

BACKGROUND The HIV epidemic is a major public health problem in the United States, particularly among rural African American adolescents and young adults. OBJECTIVES We sought to explore young, rural African American's perspectives about key programmatic components to consider when designing youth-targeted, community- based HIV prevention interventions. METHODS We report data from four focu...

OBJECT Infection is a serious and costly complication of CSF shunt implantation. Antibiotic-impregnated shunts (AISs) were introduced almost 10 years ago, but reports on their ability to decrease the infection rate have been mixed. The authors conducted a meta-analysis assessing the extent to which AISs reduce the rate of shunt infection compared with standard shunts (SSs). They also examined c...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the feasibility, fidelity, and effectiveness of a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention intervention delivered to HIV-infected patients by counselors during routine clinical care in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. METHODS A total of 152 HIV-infected patients, aged 18 years and older, receiving clinical care at an urban hospital in South Africa, were randomly assigne...

In Vietnam HIV infection is concentrated in key populations, including persons who inject drugs (PWID). The majority of PWID can name specific transmission routes of HIV, yet risk behaviors remain high. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 1,355 PWID in Thai Nguyen Province, Vietnam, to compare their HIV knowledge with their self-reported risk behavior. Broader knowledge of HIV transmission...

Mobile health (mHealth) is gaining widespread attention for its potential to engage patients in their health and health care in their daily lives. Emerging evidence suggests that mHealth interventions can be used effectively to support behavior change, but numerous challenges remain when implementing these programs at the community level. This paper provides an overview of considerations when i...

Theory suggests that human behavior has implications for disease spread. We examine the hypothesis that individuals engage in voluntary defensive behavior during an epidemic. We estimate the number of passengers missing previously purchased flights as a function of concern for swine flu or A/H1N1 influenza using 1.7 million detailed flight records, Google Trends, and the World Health Organizati...

Ten years ago, scholars suggested that risk communication was embarking on a new phase that would give increased attention to the social contexts that surround and encroach on public responses to risk information. A decade later, many researchers have answered the call, with several defining studies examining the social and psychological influences on risk communication. This article reviews ri...