ID: 250

Type of submission: Oral

Conference track: Research

Topics: Key Populations and Harm Reduction; Women, Drug Use and Harm Reduction

Presenting author: Claudia Stoicescu

Presenting author biography:

Claudia is a doctoral researcher at Oxford University's Centre for Evidence Based Intervention. She is a Trudeau Foundation Scholar and Canadian Institutes of Health Research doctoral award recipient. Claudia has worked for various international organisations and agencies, including Harm Reduction International, UNAIDS, Indonesia's National AIDS Commission and Open Society Foundations.

Intimate partner violence and injection-related HIV risk among women who inject drugs in Indonesia: results from a respondent-driven sampling study

Claudia Stoicescu, Lucie Cluver, Marisa Casale

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) and HIV are overlapping epidemics that disproportionately affect women who inject drugs. Yet little is known about the relationship between IPV and unsafe injecting practices among women in limited-resource settings. This paper sought to investigate: (1) the prevalence of intimate partner violence and receptive syringe sharing, respectively; and (3) whether intimate partner violence was associated with increased odds of engaging in receptive syringe sharing, among women who inject drugs in Indonesia.

Methods: Respondent driven sampling (RDS) was used to recruit 731 women aged ≥18 years, actively injecting drugs, and residing in Greater Jakarta or Bandung, West Java. RDS-adjusted multiple logistic regressions were conducted to assess the relationship between psychological and physical/injurious intimate partner violence and receptive syringe sharing, controlling for potentially confounding socio-demographic, drug- and partner-related covariates.

Results: Among the 731 women who enrolled in the study, 15.3% (unweighted 21.1%) engaged in receptive syringe sharing in the previous month. 75.8% of women reported some form of past-year intimate partner violence, including psychological or physical/injurious. After controlling for potentially confounding factors and including both IPV types in the final regression, physical/injurious assault (OR=1.96; 95% CI=1.03, 3.73; p<0.041) and injection of illicit buprenorphine (OR=2.14; 95% CI=1.06, 4.33; p<0.034) remained significantly associated with receptive syringe sharing.

Conclusions: Intimate partner violence is a significant risk factor for injection-related HIV risk among women who inject drugs in Indonesia. Harm reduction interventions aimed at reducing risk behaviours among women who inject drugs should include intimate partner violence screening and related violence prevention and support services. Couples interventions aimed at reducing the incidence of intimate partner violence may be necessary to address high levels of violence in drug-involved intimate partnerships.