Sociodemographic and access-related correlates of health-care utilization among African American injection drug users: The BESURE study

ABSTRACTPersons who inject drugs (PWID) may have less access to, and utilization of, health-care services, and African American PWID may be less likely than other racial groups to utilize health care in the United States. The present study evaluated the prevalence of health-care utilization (HCU) among a cohort of African American PWID in Baltimore. Data were from the 2012 Baltimore National HIV Behavioral Surveillance study. Participants were adult PWID and recruited using respondent-driven sampling (RDS). They completed a comprehensive sociobehavioral survey and voluntary HIV test with trained study interviewers. Analyses included descriptive and bivariate statistics to examine the prevalence of HCU, defined as seeing a health-care provider in the past year. Poisson regression assessed correlates of HCU. Participants were 61% male; 23% self-reported HIV seropositivity. Nearly 90% reported unemployment and/or disability; HCU prevalence was 85%. Significant negative correlates of HCU included age and high...