title: Protecting oneself from human immunodeficiency virus: are prevention messages being heard?
abstract: The transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other communicable diseases is socially organized. Public health attempts to reduce HIV transmission have admonished persons to reduce their risks--in effect, to act as if their partners are or could be HIV-seropositive. Therefore, a good test of the effectiveness of public health messages is to compare the riskiness of behaviors among HIV-seronegative persons with the riskiness of the behavior of serodiscordant partners. Data were collected for a network study of 267 drug users and nonusers in an urban inner city. Results show that in most of the domains studied, persons with HIV-seronegative partners engaged in less risky behavior than did persons whose partners were HIV-seropositive. This result suggests that risk reduction messages have been relatively successful in convincing most persons to treat their partner as if he or she were HIV-seropositive.
authors.affiliation: Affiliated Systems Corporation, Houston, Texas 77027-6022, USA. dbell@affiliatedsystems.com
authors.forename: David C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Bell
authors.forename: Victoria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Mosier
authors.forename: John S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Atkinson
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness; D003142:Communication; D006678:HIV; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology / Q000635:transmission; D018023:HIV Seronegativity / Q000502:physiology*; D006679:HIV Seropositivity / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D012309:Risk-Taking; D021841:Safe Sex; D012747:Sexual Partners / Q000523:psychology