Socially Connected Neighborhoods and the Spread of Sexually Transmitted Infections

Sexually trans-mit-ted infec-tions (STIs) in the United States have been increas-ing at record lev-els and exhibit unequal spa-tial pat-tern-ing across urban pop-u-la-tions and neigh-bor-hoods. Research on the effects of res-i-den-tial and nearby neigh-bor-hoods on STI pro-lif-er-a-tion has largely ignored the role of socially connected con-texts, even though neigh-bor-hoods are rou-tinely linked by indi-vid-u-als' move-ments across space for work and other social activ-i-ties. We show-case how com-mut-ing and pub-lic tran-sit net-works con-trib-ute to the social spill-over of STIs in Chicago. Examining data on all-employee-employer loca-tion links recorded yearly by the Census Bureau for more than a decade, we assess net-work spill-over effects of local com-mu-nity STI rates on interconnected com-mu-ni-ties. Spatial and net-work autoregressive mod-els show that expo-sure to STIs in geo-graph-i-cally prox-i-mate and socially prox-i-mate com-mu-ni-ties con-trib-utes to increases in local STI lev-els, even net of socio-eco-nomic and demographic fac-tors and prior STIs. These find-ings sug-gest that geo-graph-i-cally prox-i-mate and socially connected com-mu-ni-ties influ-ence one another's infec-tion rates through social spill-over effects.