HIV and HCV health beliefs in an inner-city community

Chronic infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is more prevalent than human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, but more public health resources are allocated to HIV than to HCV. Given shared risk factors and epidemiology, we compared accuracy of health beliefs about HIV and HCV in an at‐risk community. Between 2002 and 2003, we surveyed a random patient sample at a primary care clinic in New York. The survey was organized as domains of Common Sense Model of Self‐Regulation: causes (‘sharing needles’), timeline/consequences (‘remains in body for life’, ‘causes cancer’) and controllability (‘I can avoid this illness’, ‘medications may cure this illness’). We compared differences in accuracy of beliefs about HIV and HCV and used multivariable linear regression to identify factors associated with relative accuracy of beliefs. One hundred and twenty‐two subjects completed the survey (response rate 42%). Mean overall health belief accuracy was 12/15 questions (80%) for HIV vs 9/15 (60%) for HCV (P