Injecting drug users: social networks and molecular epidemiology of the hepatitis C virus

Funded Activity Summary

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) continues to spread among injecting drug users (IDUs) in Australia at a very high rate, despite success in preventing the spread of HIV in the same groups; the complete reasons for this remain unclear. There is an urgent need for the HCV epidemic among IDUs to be contained. To do so, we must better understand the ways in which it is spreading among IDUs. Much is known about risk behaviours of individual IDUs and how they contribute to HCV transmission; much less is known about how these behaviours are modified by the influence of the IDUs peer group, especially their immediate and intimate social networks. Despite its importance in influencing attitudes and behaviours, and therefore HCV transmission, this has never been studied in Australia, nor, in relation to HCV, in the world. We hope that by studying social and risk networks of IDUs we shall discover new ways in which control of the HCV epidemic can be achieved in Australia. We intend to do this among two groups of young IDUs, one of Vietnamese ethnicity, located in the one suburb of Melbourne. By using field techniques for gathering information (ethnography), and sophisticated analytic techniques to understand how these networks are formed and influence behaviours, we hope to be able to identify interventions which work at the level of the social group rather than the individual in bringing about the behaviour change necessary to prevent HCV transmission. To ensure that the risk networks we describe are as influential as they appear, and to discover more about the variability of HCV, we will also be investigating the relationship between the various strains of HCV in members of the IDU networks, particularly as another measure of the connectedness of networks and network members. This will be done using sophisticated genetic analysis of the HCV obtained from network members by blood test.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2000

End Date: 01-01-2002

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Strategic Awards

Funding Amount: $543,868.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Optical technology

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Hepatitis C virus | ethnography | injecting drug use | molecular epidemiology | prevention of transmission | social network analysis

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