Intersectionality of Race and Mental Health Among People who Inject Drugs from Respondent Driven Sampling

Oregon Convention Center 

Respondent driven sampling (RDS) has been practiced in studies targeting people who inject drugs (PWID), who, otherwise, are difficult to recruit. Although lacking stability, typically existing for a short term, PWID do form social networks. RDS capitalizes on this nature of the PWID community and recruits its members.
We conducted the Project Positive Attitudes towards Health (PATH), an RDS study of Southeast Michigan PWID in 2022-2023. Reflecting the demographic composition of the study area, our sample comprised a large proportion of minoritized PWID. This offers us a unique opportunity to examine health outcomes by race among PWID. Further, because RDS hinges on existing social networks, its byproducts (e.g., whether a respondent successfully recruits a PWID peer) along with various social network measures implemented in the PATH (e.g., "how many PWID do you know?") allow us to examine not only the PWID social networks by race but also the role of social networks on mental health and in the relationship between mental health and race. We illustrate this intersectionality through network visualization in conjunction with modelling techniques.