Using Knowledge of Social Networks to Prevent Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infections: The Colorado Springs Study

The development of an applied social science research project with implications for the management of infectious diseases is described. The project evolved out of a multidisciplinary effort to understand how sexually transmissible agents enter into social systems, are transmitted and can be identified, prevented and controlled. Collaborators began their investigations in the 1970s by looking at the social and behavioral patterns of individuals infected with gonorrhea, then applied similar methods in the late 1980s and early 1990s to examine the ways human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the pathogen that causes AIDS, might spread among heterosexuals in a mid-sized American community. Concepts of personal and social networks of individuals linked by social, sexual and drug-sharing exposures guided the systematic collection of information from 595 participants in a large, prospective study. Results suggest that HIV did not spread among heterosexuals who engaged in risky sexual and needle-sharing behaviors in Colorado Springs because those infected with HIV (and capable of infecting others) were located in small, relatively isolated network components or in peripheral network regions.