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

评估宗教组织对艾滋病毒和药物使用预防的影响需要了解 个人的宗教信仰(内在的精神信仰和外在的虔诚表现)；宗教组织 活跃性；以及将人与人之间和组织与组织联系起来的关系网络。至 测量影响，我们建议对80名HIV阳性患者和160名HIV阴性患者进行病例对照研究(并进行纵向随访) 从亚特兰大一个紧张的市中心社区招募的人(甚至按性别划分)以确定 宗教组织活动对艾滋病、性传播疾病、血液传播的影响 感染(BBI)和药物使用。我们将制定一个接触宗教组织艾滋病毒的人-时间指标 预防活动(例如，与宗教组织代表接触的时间)。我们会 在个人宗教信仰、网络可能造成混乱的背景下，评估这种暴露的影响 以及其他人口统计和行为变量，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，预防分数是一种相关性的流行病学衡量标准 指定可归因于特定预防因素或干预措施的疾病预防部分。 我们将录取受访者点名的宗教组织，以评估组织的活动， 承诺，以及彼此之间的联系。两方网络(组织和答复者)将是 用于检查组织的从属关系网络(它们如何通过人员联系)。这个 将从属网络与根据宗教组织自我报告确定的网络进行比较 关系。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的未被认识到的干预潜力。 因此，推动这项提议的逻辑思路如下：宗教组织活动将显著 与艾滋病毒阴性和非药物使用有关，但根据PF衡量，其影响将是很小的。这个 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.