O15.2 ‘It’s behaviors; It’s not identity’: Attitudes Related to HIV Risk and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Among Transgender Women in the Southeastern US

Abstract

similar patterns of sexualized substance use, and multinomial logistic regression was employed to examine associations between class membership and measures of social capital, including age of sexual debut, bonding and bridging social capital, connectedness to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and outness. Results Latent class analysis revealed three classes of YMSM based on their histories of sexualized substance use, which we labelled as 'alcohol', 'poppers', and 'chemsex'. Participants in the alcohol class (n=348) reported only ever using alcohol and not other substances during sex. Participants in the poppers class (n=140) had mostly ever used poppers (n=136, 97.1%), with some reporting ever using other chemsex-related substances, during sex. Most participants in the chemsex class (n=23) reported using methamphetamine, gamma-hydroxybutyrate/gamma-butyrolactone, and erectile dysfunction drugs during sex. Multivariable analyses revealed that participants who were older (aOR=1.19, p=0.002) and who identified as gay (aOR=2.43, p=0.002) were more likely to be in the poppers class compared to the alcohol class. Participants with a later age of sexual debut were increasingly less likely to be in the poppers (aOR=0.93, p=0.039) and chemsex classes (aOR=0.85, p=0.018), compared to the alcohol class, exhibiting a dose-response relationship. Conclusions Varying measures of social capital such as an earlier age of exposure to sexual networks may predispose YMSM to greater opportunities for sexualized substance use. Future interventions should target YMSM who become sexually active at an earlier age.