Prior research shows that
violence is associated with sexual risk behavior, but little is known about the
relation between community violence (i.e., violence that is witnessed or
experienced in one's neighborhood) and sexual risk behavior.
To better
understand contextual influences on HIV risk behavior, we asked 508 adult
patients attending a publicly funded STI clinic in the U.S. (54 % male, M age = 27.93, 68 % African American) who were
participating in a larger trial to complete a survey assessing exposure to
community violence, sexual risk behavior, and potential mediators of the
community violence-sexual risk behavior relation (i.e., mental health,
substance use, and experiencing intimate partner violence).
A separate sample
of participants from the same trial completed measures of sexual behavior
norms, which were aggregated to create measures of census tract sexual behavior
norms.
Data analyses controlling for socioeconomic status revealed that higher
levels of community violence were associated with more sexual partners for men
and with more episodes of unprotected sex with non-steady partners for women.
For both men and women, substance use and mental health mediated the community
violence-sexual risk behavior relation; in addition, for men only, experiencing
intimate partner violence also mediated this relation.
These results confirm
that, for individuals living in communities with high levels of violence, sexual
risk reduction interventions need to address intimate partner violence,
substance use, and mental health to be optimally effective.
Purchase full article at:
- 1School of Nursing, University of Rochester, Box SON, 601 Elmwood Ave., Rochester, NY, 14642, USA. Theresa_Senn@urmc.rochester.edu.
- 2Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, The Miriam Hospital and Brown University, 164 Summit Ave., Providence, RI, 02906, USA.
- 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Center for AIDS Intervention Research, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
- Arch Sex Behav. 2016 Mar 21.
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