It has been hypothesized that social connectivity, serial or network has a role in fueling the HIV epidemic. I am looking for a very good technique that I need to employ in a community intervention to understand how these networks may be studied and findings used in preventing further infections.
Definitely there has been increased interest in the use of valid models to both explain the social networks and their influences on disease transmitting behavior that can drive the spread of HIV and other sexual and drug use infections within specific vulnerable subgroups, and how to use that understanding to design specific network interventions that can prevent high rates of infection in particular networks, communities and geographic areas. A number of social and sexual network experts have been instrumental in the development of these network delineation aproaches and their influences on differential disease spread, among them being Samuel R Friedman and Don Des Jarlais of New York, Edward Laumann, U of Chicago, and Judith Auerbach of the SF AIDS Foundation, just to name a few leading researchers. As increased attention has focused on racial and other health disparities that seem to transcend SES and access to care, social network studies have become an integral part of explaining why, even in relatively affluent societies, specific subgroups, such as young Black MSM, have 7-10x higher levels of HIV incidence than white or Latino youth with similar risk behavior profiles. I highly recommend SR Friedman et al. monograph "Social Networks, Drug Injectors' Lives and HIV/AIDS," 1999, Kluwer Academic, NY, NY, as a good place to start learning how social network and sociosexual connectivity measurement and analysis can greatly broaden our understanding of disease transmission and prevention beyond that possible with only traditional epidemiologic methodology.
Glad I could be of help. it is really not my area of expertise, but I work with the persons I named who are leaders. Also the UN AIDS uses molecular sequencing of the HIV viruses found in different parts of the network to get a good picture of the actual spread of specific "substrains" of HIV being transmitted through the sociosexual networks of contact, influence, shared drug use etc. Good luck in your applying these powerful methods to the elimination of HIV infection in the networks you are studying.
Dear Maurice,
a researcher who worked thoroughly in this field is Mirjam Kretzschmar, at present at University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, so if you search PubMed with "kretzschmar m[au]" and model / modeling / mathematical modeling and so far … you will find plenty of studies not only on HIV, but also on other infectious diseases in this context such as Hepatitis B and C
I recommend you use impact studies on health interventions from the qualitative point of view.
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