Jaime White has recently joined CSDE and the UW as our new Grants Manager, providing pre-award and post-award support to our faculty. Prior to joining CSDE, she worked in social services, affordable housing, and the Arts nonprofits as a grant writer and development professional. She completed an MA from the Jackson School with a focus on Comparative Religion in 2018 and has a BA in Religious Studies from Humboldt State University (now Cal Poly Humboldt). She also completed a graduate certificate from the Evans School in Nonprofit Management in 2018. In her personal time, she enjoys swimming, circus arts, happy hour, and snuggling with her 2 cats, Plum and Veggie.

On November 1st from 3:30 – 4:30 pm Yigit Okar, UW Econ PhD Candidate, will join CSDE to discuss his experience with running online experiments during his internships at Amazon. CDWG will be Hybrid in the Fall Quarter 2023. Register on Zoom here  or attend in person in 223 Raitt (Demography Lab). Yigit Okar is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Washington, Seattle, with prior degrees in Economics and Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul. During his internships at Amazon in the summers of 2021, 2022, and 2023, he worked on projects delved into A/B testing and causal inference with machine learning. His academic endeavors include text regression research using transformer-based encodings and choice modeling with high dimensions. He also contributes as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at his university. Yigit has been honored with the Diversity Scholarship by NABE in 2021 and the Jeff and Perri Roe Term Fellowship in 2020. Yigit extends his interests to scientific blogging and guitar playing beyond the academic sphere.

Sai Win Kyaw Htet Aung and CSDE Affiliates Carey Farquhar (Global Health, Medicine, and Epidemiology), Brandon Guthrie (Global Health), published their work with co-authors in Harm Reduction Journal, titled “Prevalence and correlates of violence among sexual and injecting partners of people who inject drugs living with HIV in Kenya: a cross-sectional study“. This article was led by Sai Win Kyaw Htet Aung, who completed his MPH in the Department of Global Health as an international student from Myanmar. In Kenya, violence is common among people who inject drugs (PWID) living with HIV and their sexual and injecting partners and may lead to decreased uptake of HIV services, increased HIV risk behaviors, and increased HIV transmission. Violence is defined as any physical harm, threatened harm, or forced sexual acts inflicted on a person in the past year. Understanding the nature of violence and its correlates among PWID and their partners will inform population-specific public health interventions and policy recommendations.

This is a cross-sectional study nested in a prospective cohort study conducted in eight public health centers, methadone clinics, and needle syringe programs in Nairobi, Kilifi, and Mombasa counties in Kenya. 3,302 sexual and/or injecting partners of PWID living with HIV were recruited through assisted partner services and participated in the study. Prevalence and correlates of violence were identified using the Wald test and negative binomial regression.

Out of 3302 study participants, 1439 (44%) had experienced violence within the past year. Physical violence was the most common form of violence experienced (35%), followed by being threatened (23%) or subjected to sexual violence (7%). In an adjusted analysis, female participants reported higher experiences of sexual violence (prevalence ratio [PR] = 2.46; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.62, 3.74; p < 0.001) compared to male participants. In adjusted analysis, coastal residents had a higher experience of overall violence (PR = 1.48; 95% CI 1.27, 1.72; p < 0.001) than those living in Nairobi. This regional effect was relatively stronger among the female respondents (p_interaction = 0.025). Participants’ sex modified the association between region and experiencing violence after adjusting potential confounding factors.

The study reveals the prevalence of violence among PWID and identifies high-risk sub-groups, including women, specifically for sexual violence, and coastal residents. Tailored interventions addressing their unique needs are essential. A holistic approach that combines violence prevention and response, comprehensive harm reduction, healthcare access, and community support is crucial to address the complex issue of drug use and HIV burden among PWID in Kenya for improved health outcomes.