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Published on: July 6, 2014
HIV vulnerability among adolescent girls and young women: a multi-country latent class analysis approach
Sanyukta Mathur1, Nanlesta Pilgrim2, Sangram Kishor Patel3
1Population Council, 4301 Connecticut Ave, Suite 280, Washington, DC, USA. smathur@popcouncil.org.
Objectives:
To stem the HIV epidemic among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW, 15-24 years), prevention programs need to reach AGYW who are most at risk. We examine whether individual- and household-level factors could be used to define HIV vulnerability for AGYW.
Methods:
We surveyed out-of-school AGYW in urban and peri-urban Kenya (N = 1014), in urban Zambia (N = 846), and in rural Malawi (N = 1654) from October 2016 to 2017. LCA identified classes based on respondent characteristics, attitudes and knowledge, and household characteristics. Multilevel regressions examined associations between class membership and HIV-related health outcomes.
Results:
We identified two latent classes-high and low HIV vulnerability profiles-among AGYW in each country; 32% of the sample in Kenya, 53% in Malawi, and 51% in Zambia belonged to the high vulnerability group. As compared to AGYW with a low-vulnerability profile, AGYW with a high-vulnerability profile had significantly higher odds of HIV-related outcomes (e.g., very early sexual debut, transactional sex, sexual violence from partners).
Conclusions:
Out-of-school AGYW had differential vulnerability to HIV. Interventions should focus on reaching AGYW in the high HIV vulnerability profiles.
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