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BACKGROUND: Adolescent pregnancy and childbirth are common throughout Central America. While gendered beliefs promoting motherhood are a known risk factor, their association with adolescent childbirth within the social networks of Central American communities is unknown. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study looking at adolescent childbirth amongst women ages 15-20 years (N = 2990) in rural Honduras, using reproductive health data on all individuals ≥15 years of age (N = 24 937 of 31 300 population) including social network contacts, all of whom were interviewed as part of the study. The outcome, adolescent childbirth, was defined as having had a child < age 20 years. Predictors included whether a woman's social contact had an adolescent childbirth and the social contact's reported perception of community support for adolescent childbirth. RESULTS: While girls who identified a father in the village as a social contact had a lower likelihood of adolescent childbirth regardless of whether or not they reported being in a partnership, this finding did not hold for girls who identified mothers. There was an association between a social contact's report of norms supporting adolescent childbirth and a girl's risk of adolescent childbirth; however, village-level aggregate norms attenuated that relationship. Independent significant associations were found between a girl's risk of adolescent childbirth and both a social contact's adolescent childbirth and the village proportion of women who had had an adolescent childbirth. The association between social contacts' adolescent childbirth and a girl's risk of adolescent childbirth across relationships was more robust for stronger relationships and when the social contact was closer in age to the girl. CONCLUSIONS: If, as this evidence suggests, a strong driver of adolescent childbirth is the frequency of the occurrence of adolescent childbirth both within the greater community and within a girl's proximal social network, the challenge for intervention strategies is to encourage norms that prevent adolescent childbirth without stigmatising those who have had an adolescent childbirth. Programmatic efforts to counter prevailing norms that limit a woman's role to motherhood, and that support and encourage strong norms for girls' education may play an important role in addressing this situation.

Assuntos

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Adolescent childbearing rates are higher in Central America than almost anywhere else. However, in this research we discovered that adolescent childbearing exhibits variability from one village to another, and we might discover factors associated with this spatial variability that can help us understand key characteristics underlying the pattern of early childbearing. To do this, we assessed the village-level normative and network factors associated with adolescent birth (birth taking place before age 20 years) in rural Honduras and evaluated the geographic dispersion of these patterns. We used full population data from 24,937 people in 176 villages (81% of the eligible population) to assess prevalence and patterns of adolescent childbearing among women. We modeled the predictors of adolescent births among women younger than 21 years. After accounting for individual demographic characteristics, one of the strongest predictors of adolescent birth within the population was village-level collective norms about the acceptability of adolescent childbearing, based on aggregating normative measures from the entire population. The proportion of women in the village who had given birth as an adolescent was also strongly associated with an individual girl's likelihood of having given birth as an adolescent. We used full village-level network analyses to calculate social cohesion within the village. Normative pressure was strongly associated with the likelihood of an adolescent birth in villages with high cohesion (high network density) and was not associated or had a weak association in villages with low cohesion. On the other hand, the longer a girl had lived in the village, the stronger the association between the overall proportion of women in that village who gave birth as adolescents and the girl's own likelihood of having done so. Spatial analyses suggest that levels of adolescent births vary spatially across villages, as do the village-level normative factors associated with them.

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We explored intraurban mobility of Tijuana, Mexico, injection drug users (IDUs). In 2005, 222 IDUs underwent behavioral surveys and infectious disease testing. Participants resided in 58 neighborhoods, but regularly injected in 30. From logistic regression, "mobile" IDUs (injecting ≥3 km from their residence) were more likely to cross the Mexico/U.S. border, share needles, and get arrested for carrying syringes-but less likely to identify hepatitis as an injection risk. Mobile participants lived in neighborhoods with less drug activity, treatment centers, or migrants, but higher marriage and home ownership rates. Mobile IDUs should be targeted for outreach and further investigation. The study's limitations are noted.

Assuntos

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The northwest border city of Tijuana is Mexico's fifth largest and is experiencing burgeoning drug use and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemics. Since local geography influences disease risk, we explored the spatial distribution of HIV among injection drug users (IDUs). From 2006-2007, 1056 IDUs were recruited using respondent-driven sampling, and then followed for eighteen months. Participants underwent semi-annual surveys, mapping, and testing for HIV, tuberculosis, and syphilis. Using Average Nearest Neighbor and Getis-Ord Gi* statistics, locations where participants lived, worked, bought and injected drugs were compared with HIV status and environmental and behavioral factors. Median age was thirty-seven years; 85 percent were male. Females had higher HIV prevalence than males (10.2 percent vs. 3.4 percent; p=0.001). HIV cases at baseline (n=47) most strongly clustered by drug injection sites (Z-Score -6.173; p < 0.001), with a 16 km2 hotspot near the Mexico/U.S. border, encompassing the red-light district. Spatial correlates of HIV included syphilis infection, female gender, younger age, increased hours on the street per day, and higher number of injection partners. Almost all HIV seroconverters injected within a 2.5 block radius of each other immediately prior to seroconversion. Only history of syphilis infection and female gender were strongly associated with HIV in the area where incident cases injected. Directional trends suggested a largely static epidemic until July-December 2008, when HIV spread to the southeast, possibly related to intensified violence and policing that spiked in the latter half of 2008. While clustering allows for targeting interventions, the dynamic nature of epidemics suggests the importance of mobile treatment and harm reduction programs.

RESUMO

PURPOSE: Dengue fever has re-emerged as an increasingly significant global health threat amid diminishing resources pledged for its control in developing nations. Efforts to limit breeding of the dengue vector Aedes aegypti are often hampered by lack of community awareness of the disease. METHODS: Sixty-eight households in St Catherine Parish, Jamaica completed a pilot knowledge, attitude, and practice questionnaire as part of a routine container survey for presence of A. aegypti larvae. RESULTS: Infestation levels were high according to traditional Stegomyia indices (Breteau index = 325); however, general knowledge of dengue symptoms, A. aegypti breeding sites, and preventive practices was low. After examining the links between demographic characteristics, dengue knowledge, and the number of breeding sites per house, higher educational achievement was associated with higher dengue knowledge, but also with more unprotected containers. Overall dengue knowledge was not associated with household container counts. Spatial statistics identified weak clustering of larvae-positive containers, and larvae were concentrated in three key container types. CONCLUSION: Residents may only understand the role of certain container types, and significant gaps in general knowledge of the disease may inhibit vector control. This pilot demonstrates the feasibility of conducting inexpensive, rapid assessment of community knowledge and breeding levels for local governments lacking the resources for a more methodologically robust vector assessment strategy.

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An increasing body of literature documenting what has become known as "the Epidemiological Paradox" has shown that some immigrant groups to the United States tend to have healthier birth outcomes than would be expected given their sociodemographic profiles. Furthermore, the children of these immigrants do not seem to enjoy the same advantage in reproductive health that their parents did. This phenomenon, though amply documented in the literature, has not been sufficiently explained. We investigate the role of assimilation in this paradox, and we do so within a spatial framework. We examine the effect of residence in a Mexican enclave in the attenuation of risk of low birth weight (LBW) for Mexican-origin mothers in San Diego County, California. We find that Mexican-origin women do seem to enjoy a reduced risk of giving birth to an LBW baby when they live in a Mexican enclave.