@article{6339247f24a04adaac498a4616640abf,
title = "The Interaction of Risk Network Structures and Virus Natural History in the Non-spreading of HIV Among People Who Inject Drugs in the Early Stages of the Epidemic",
abstract = "This article explores how social network dynamics may have reduced the spread of HIV-1 infection among people who inject drugs during the early years of the epidemic. Stochastic, discrete event, agent-based simulations are used to test whether a “firewall effect” can arise out of self-organizing processes at the actor level, and whether such an effect can account for stable HIV prevalence rates below population saturation. Repeated simulation experiments show that, in the presence of recurring, acute, and highly infectious outbreaks, micro-network structures combine with the HIV virus{\textquoteright}s natural history to reduce the spread of the disease. These results indicate that network factors likely played a significant role in the prevention of HIV infection within injection risk networks during periods of peak prevalence. They also suggest that social forces that disturb network connections may diminish the natural firewall effect and result in higher rates of HIV.",
keywords = "Firewall effect, PWID, Risk networks, Simulation",
author = "Kirk Dombrowski and Bilal Khan and Patrick Habecker and Holly Hagan and Friedman, {Samuel R.} and Mohamed Saad",
note = "Funding Information: Original data collection was supported by NIH/NIDA Grant R01DA006723 (PI Friedman). Co-author Friedman was Principal Investigator of the SFHR project and has full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data analysis upon which this study is based. The modeling research presented here is supported by NIH/NIDA Grants R01DA037117-01 (PIs Dombrowski and Khan) and R01DA034637-01 (PI Hagan). The original simulation platform was developed under 1RC1DA-028476-01/02 (PIs Dombrowski and Khan). In addition, all of the authors have received support and assistance from the NYU{\textquoteright}s Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, funded by NIH P30 DA011041 (PIs Deren, Hagan), and Friedman (PI) under DP1 DA034989. We wish to acknowledge the work performed by Katherine McLean, Ric Curtis, and Travis Wendel at several points during this research. Special thanks to Colleen Syron for drawing the illustrations in Fig. . The opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse, or the National Science Foundation. The analyses discussed in this paper were carried out at the REACH Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (reach.unl.edu). Initial funding for a pilot version of this project was provided by the NSF Office of Behavioral, Social, and Economic Sciences, Anthropology Program Grant BCS-0752680 (PI Dombrowski). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.",
year = "2017",
month = apr,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1007/s10461-016-1568-6",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "21",
pages = "1004--1015",
journal = "AIDS and Behavior",
issn = "1090-7165",
publisher = "Springer New York",
number = "4",
}