Substance abuse treatment utilization, HIV risk behaviors, and recruitment among suburban injection drug users in Long Island, New York.

Prevention and treatment of injection drug use remains a public health concern. We used data from the 2005 Centers for Disease Control and prevention National HIV Behavioral Surveillance system to assess substance abuse treatment utilization, risk behaviors, and recruitment processes in a respondent driven sample of suburban injectors. Twelve service utilization and injection risk variables were analyzed using latent class analysis. Three latent classes were identified: low use, low risk; low use, high risk; and high use, moderate/high risk. In multivariate analysis, annual income <$15,000 (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 8.19 [95 % confidence interval (CI), 3.83-17.51]) and self-reported hepatitis C virus infection (aOR = 4.32, 95 % CI (1.84-10.17)) were significantly associated with class membership. Homophily, a measure of preferential recruitment showed that injectors with recent treatment utilization appear a more cohesive group than out-of-treatment injectors. Preferentially reaching injection drug users with high risk behaviors and no recent drug treatment history via respondent driven sampling will require future research.