Religion's Impact on Drug Use and Transmission of HIV, STIs, BBIs

评估宗教组织对预防艾滋病毒和吸毒的影响需要了解 个人的宗教信仰（包括内在的灵性和外在的奉献表现）;宗教组织 activtty;以及将人与人之间以及人与组织之间联系起来的关系网络。到 为了衡量影响，我们提出了一项病例对照研究（纵向随访），80例HIV阳性和160例HIV阴性 从亚特兰大市中心一个压力很大的社区招募来的人（甚至按性别划分）， 宗教组织活动对艾滋病毒状况、性传播疾病、血液传播疾病 感染（BBI）和药物使用。我们将制定一个暴露于宗教组织艾滋病毒的人次指标 预防活动（例如，与宗教组织代表接触的人时）。我们将 评估在个人宗教信仰、网络、 协会，以及其他人口和行为变量，并将量化宗教的影响， 组织使用预防分数对这些结果进行评估，这是一种流行病学关联措施， 指定可归因于特定预防因素或干预措施的预防疾病部分。 我们将登记受访者所提到的宗教组织，以评估组织的活动， 承诺，以及彼此之间的联系。将建立一个双边网络（组织和答复者）， 用于检查组织的从属关系网络（它们如何通过人员连接）。的 联系网络将与宗教组织自我报告的网络进行比较 连接.这两者之间的差距，我们假设是相当大的，是衡量 通过改善宗教组织之间的互动，可以实现未得到承认的干预潜力。 因此，推动该提案的逻辑火车如下：宗教组织活动将大大增加 与艾滋病毒阴性和非药物使用相关，但其影响，如PF所衡量的，将是很小的。的 宗教组织之间的相互联系比他们意识到的要大得多。

Assessing the impact of religious organizations on HIV and drug-use prevention requires an understanding of personal religiosity (both inward spirituality and outward manifestations of devotion); of religious organization activtty; and of the network of relationships that connects persons to each other and to organizations. To measure impact, we propose a case-control study (with longitudinal followup) of 80 HIV-positive and 160 HIVnegative persons (divided even by sex) recruited from a stressed inner-city Atlanta neighborhood to ascertain the influence of religious organization activity on HIV status, sexually transmitted diseases (STIs), blood-borne infections (BBIs), and drug use. We will develop a person-time metric for exposure to religious organization HIV preventive activity (e.g., person-hours spent in contact with religious organization representatives). We will assess the impact of such exposure in the context of potential confounding by personal religiosity, network associations, and other demographic and behavioral variables, and will quantify the impact of religious organizations on these outcomes using the Prevented Fraction, an epidemiologic measure of association that specifies the portion of disease prevented that can be attributed to a specific preventive factor or intervention. We will enroll the religious organizations named by respondents, in order to assess organizations' activities, commitment, and connections with each other. A bipartite network (organizations and respondents) will be used to examine the affiliation network of organizations (how they are connected through people). The affiliation network will be compared to the network determined from religious organizations' self reported connections. The gap between these two, which we hypothesize to be considerable, is a measure of the unrecognized potential for intervention that can be achieved by improved interaction of religious organizations. Thus, the logical train that drives the proposal is as follows: Religious organization activity will be significantly associated with HIV-negativity and nondrug-use, but its impact, as measured by the PF, will be small. The interconnections among religious organizations are far greater than they realize.