Concurrent Sexual Partnerships Among Men in the United States

Abstract

Objectives. We sought to determine the prevalence, distribution, and correlates of US men’s involvement in concurrent sexual partnerships, a sexual network pattern that speeds population dissemination of HIV. Methods. For this analysis, we compared sexual partnership dates of 4928 male respondents in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth to determine the prevalence of concurrent sexual partnerships and evaluated associations between concurrency and demographic risk characteristics. Results. Approximately 11% of men had concurrent sexual partnerships during the preceding year. Concurrency was associated with being unmarried (odds ratio [OR] = 4.59; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.54, 8.29), non-Hispanic Black (OR=2.56; 95% CI=1.61, 4.07) or Hispanic (OR=2.25; 95% CI=1.32, 3.85) race/ethnicity, and incarceration during the past year (OR=2.10; 95% CI=1.18, 3.74). Men with concurrent sexual partnerships were also more likely to report drug or alcohol intoxication during sexual intercourse (OR=2.10; 95% CI=1.37, 3.21), nonmonogamous female sexual partners (OR=6.11; 95% CI=4.10, 9.11), and history of sexual intercourse with a man (OR = 1.93; 95% CI = 1.09, 3.42), than those without concurrent partnerships. Conclusions. The higher concurrency prevalence in various groups, dense sexual networks, and mixing between high-risk subpopulations and the general population may be important factors in the US epidemic of heterosexual HIV infection.