Citation

Willie T, Kershaw T, Campbell JC, Alexander KA. AIDS Behav. 2017; 21(8): 2261-2269.

Affiliation

Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, 525 North Wolfe Street, Room 417, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA. kalexan3@jhu.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10461-017-1767-9

PMID

28409266

Abstract

A few studies suggest that women who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) are willing to use pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), but no research has examined mediators of this relationship. The current study used path analysis to examine a phenomenon closely associated with IPV: reproductive coercion, or explicit male behaviors to promote pregnancy of a female partner without her knowledge or against her will. Birth control sabotage and pregnancy coercion-two subtypes of reproductive coercion behaviors-were examined as mediators of the relationship between IPV and PrEP acceptability among a cohort of 147 Black women 18-25 years of age recruited from community-based organizations in an urban city. IPV experiences were indirectly related to PrEP acceptability through birth control sabotage (indirect effect = 0.08; p < 0.05), but not to pregnancy coercion.

FINDINGS illustrate the importance of identifying and addressing reproductive coercion when assessing whether PrEP is clinically appropriate and a viable option to prevent HIV among women who experience IPV.

Language: en

Keywords

Black/African-American women; HIV; Intimate partner violence; Pre-exposure prophylaxis; Reproductive coercion