Levels of protection across concurrent sexual partnerships in urban Kenya

A great deal of research and program attention has focused on the importance of sexual partner concurrency in the continuing HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. More recently, scholars have called for investigations into the types of concurrency that could be more or less conducive to the onward transmission of infection.

 

Concurrent partnerships that involve infrequent sexual intercourse and/or highly consistent condom use will lower the risk of infection, regardless of the size of sexual network within which they are embedded. Research examining levels of protection within concurrent sexual partnerships is scant, however, in large part due to data constraints on the patterns of coitus and condom use within and across partnerships.

 

We collected retrospective life history calendar data from a population-based sample of young males and females ages 18 to 24 in urban Kisumu, Kenya, a high HIV-prevalence setting. The data include detailed monthly information on respondents’ sexual histories, including frequency of sex, condom use, and the characteristics of individuals within each relationship.

 

We use these data to explore levels of protection across both partnerships involved in concurrency and to identify the individual- and relationship-level characteristics associated with various types of concurrency. 

 

Nancy Luke, PhD, is a social demographer whose research focuses on the role that social relationships play in shaping health and development outcomes. Her current work examines the exchange of resources in intimate relationships, including bargaining between spouses and its effects on child health and marital violence in India.

 

She has also studied the exchange of money and gifts within nonmarital sexual partnerships (often referred to as “transactional sex”) in sub-Saharan Africa and its implications for safe sexual behavior. Dr. Luke’s research is interdisciplinary, incorporating theoretical and methodological insights from sociology, economics, anthropology, and public health.

 

She has designed and directed several large-scale surveys as well as conducted qualitative studies in Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia, India, and Vietnam. In support of her research, Dr. Luke has received grants from the National Institutes of Health and the World Bank. Her work has been published in leading demography, sociology, and economics journals.