Jennifer Syvertsen
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 146610 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Jennifer Syvertsen |
| NOMBRES | Jennifer |
| APELLIDO | Syvertsen |
| FIRMA | SYVERTSEN J |
| AFILIACIONES | University of California, Riverside |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2387-7273 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 43 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 50 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 43 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2005 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Social relationships, mental health, and stigma
The disclosure of one’s HIV-positive status is a personal decision that can play an important role in engagement in HIV treatment and care. Social network approaches situate individuals within broader webs of social connections that influence health and wellbeing and thus hold the potential to elucidate key social factors shaping the process of disclosure. As part of a larger clinical study examining how substance use and mental health shape HIV …
Exploring Space‐Time Interactions in Fatal Opioid Overdoses
This study investigates fatal opioid overdoses in Riverside County, California, between January 2020 and March 2023, employing advanced spatial‐temporal analysis methods to uncover significant clusters and their underlying contexts. By integrating global and local Knox tests, the research identifies both broad trends and specific hotspots of fatal overdoses. The findings reveal substantial spatial disparities, with higher overdose rates in rural …
The emergence of fentanyl in a stimulant landscape
Our research calls for evidence-based education about fentanyl, expanded access to harm reduction services, including community drug checking and safer smoking supplies, and low-barrier drug treatment as part of broader efforts to promote community care
Solidarity
What if as researchers we do not share the same experiences or belong to the same structurally marginalized communities with whom we work, yet we recognize an urgent collective need to address health injustices? In this essay, I reflect on what it means for academic researchers to work in solidarity with communities. Drawing on my community-based research on opioid overdose and harm reduction, I think about solidarity as a form of pedagogy that d…
Introduction
Funding agencies and institutions are increasingly requiring researchers to involve communities and make their work more broadly accessible. The problem is that researchers new to health equity research, and sometimes even people who have engaged in this work for a while, may not sufficiently appreciate the challenges and systemic institutional transformations that must occur to achieve equity. To make pretty words meaningful requires a return to…
Looking into the black mirror of the overdose crisis
Drug overdose is a leading cause of death among adults in the United States, prompting calls for more surveillance data and data sharing across public health and law enforcement to address the crisis. This paper integrates Black feminist science and technology studies (STS) into an anthropological analysis of the collision of public health, policing, and technology as embedded in the US National Overdose Response Strategy and its technological in…
Social support and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic among a cohort of people living with HIV (PLWH) in Western Kenya
As coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic in 2020, countries around the world implemented various prevention strategies, such as banning of public and social gatherings, restriction in movement, etc. These efforts may have had a deleterious effect on already vulnerable populations, including people living with HIV (PLWH). PLWH were concerned about contracting COVID-19, the impact of COVID-19 on their social networks that provide s…
Learning from women who trade sex in Kenya about the antiblackness of Global Health
Sex work and violence have become co-constituted, routinized, and even sanitized in Global Health journals dispassionately advocating for intervention. This paper situates ethnographically shared experiences of Kenyan sex working women within the global condition of antiblackness. By grounding our conceptual analytic in Black Feminist scholarship, we illustrate how antiblackness subtends the conditions of possibility for women's entry into sex wo…
Consider the Source
BACKGROUND: Sterile syringe access is critical to prevent serious viral and bacterial infections among people who inject drugs (PWID) but many areas across the United States lack sufficient access. Although California law allows nonprescription pharmacy syringe sales and syringe services programs (SSPs), access gaps remain in the largely rural Central Valley. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to examine syringe access and related injection…
Intersectional structural vulnerability to abusive policing among people who inject drugs
A community‐based study of abscess self‐treatment and barriers to medical care among people who inject drugs in the United States
Skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) are the most common medical complication of injection drug use in the United States, though little work has been done assessing SSTI treatment among people who inject drugs (PWID). We examined past-3-month abscess characteristics, treatment utilization, and barriers to medical treatment among N = 494 community-recruited PWID. We used descriptive statistics to determine the frequencies of self-treatment and …
Sharing Research, Building Possibility
Sharing our research with participants and communities is a standard and critically important ethical practice in anthropology, but do we use such opportunities to their full potential? In this article, I reflect on the possibilities generated by a community dissemination event to share my research with men who have sex with men and engage in sex work in Kisumu, Kenya. Drawing on Arjun Apaddurai’s concept of an “ethics of possibility” that pushes…
Syringe access and health harms
Precarious hope and reframing risk behavior from the ground up
Humanitarian programs and policies are distinctly finite in nature; focused on the short-term needs of persons affected by conflict. However, many humanitarian situations in the world are protracted. In the midst of these challenges, themes of future-orientation, possibilities, and shared aspirations for a better future emerge. These aspirations and the practices, including risk-taking practices that stem from them are central to understand if we…
Death poems for Cindy
Perspectives on biomedical HIV prevention options among women who inject drugs in Kenya
Due to heightened vulnerability to HIV from frequent engagement in sex work and overlapping drug-using and sexual networks, women who inject drugs should be a high priority population for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and other biomedical HIV prevention tools. Kenya is one of the first African countries to approve oral PrEP for HIV prevention among "key populations," including people who inject drugs and sex workers. The objective of this study…
He’s not my pimp’
Female sex work is often perceived as women being controlled by men. We used surveys and qualitative interviews with female sex workers and their intimate partners in two Northern Mexico cities to examine couples' own perceptions of their relationships and male partners' involvement in sex work. Among 214 couples, the median age was 34 and relationship duration was approximately 3 years. Only 10 women in the survey reported having a pimp, and the…
Negotiating sexual safety in the era of biomedical HIV prevention
Up to two-thirds of new cases of HIV transmission between gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in the USA are attributed to primary relationships. Understanding the relationship dynamics and sexual agreements of male-male couples can provide insight into HIV transmission patterns and prevention needs in this population. The daily use of antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is highly effective in preventing HIV, but its nego…
Stigma at every turn
Intimate Partner Violence Among Female Sex Workers and Their Noncommercial Male Partners in Mexico
Utilizing mixed methods, we examined intimate partner violence (IPV) behaviors among 428 female sex workers (FSWs) who use drugs and their noncommercial male partners in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Half of all participants reported perpetrating and experiencing at least one type of IPV behavior in the past year. In interviews, drug use emerged as an important theme associated with IPV behaviors, and we found men and women differed in their…
Cessation Clauses, Uncertain Futures and Wellbeing among Rwandan Urban Refugees in Cameroon
Over half of the world’s displaced persons live in urban areas of developing countries. As they settle into countries with already strained health services, urban refugees face a unique set of challenges related to accessing social and mental health services. Humanitarian policy can inadvertently exacerbate these problems. This article discusses the intersection of humanitarian policy and physical and mental wellbeing among the Rwandan urban-refu…
Is Wellbeing Possible when You Are Out of Place?’
Social scientists studying forced migration are confronted with raw human experiences under extreme conditions, but also bear witness to the strength reflected in how people endure and reorganize. Cities in developing countries are the destination of the majority of the world’s refugees. In light of recent policies for urban refugees and alternatives to camps and an increased focus on resilience-building programmes by humanitarian agencies, globa…
Down in the valley
A Mixed Methods Study of the Social Support Networks of Female Sex Workers and Their Primary Noncommercial Male Partners in Tijuana, Mexico
Female sex workers (FSWs) are at risk for multiple health harms, including HIV. This article describes a mixed methods study of the social support networks of 19 FSWs and their primary male sex partners in Tijuana, Mexico. We collected quantitative and qualitative social network data, including quantitative network measures, qualitative narratives, and network visualizations. Methodologically, we illustrate how a convergent mixed methods approach…
Hope Amidst Horror
Sensationalistic media coverage has fueled stereotypes of the Mexican border city of Tijuana as a violent battleground of the global drug war. While the drug war shapes health and social harms in profoundly public ways, less visible are the experiences and practices of hope that forge communities of care and represent more private responses to this crisis. In this article, we draw on ethnographic fieldwork and photo elicitation with female sex wo…
Can't Buy My Love
Female sex workers (FSWs) experience elevated risk for HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) through unprotected sex with male clients, yet the complexity of these commercial relationships remains understudied. From 2010 to 2011, we explored FSWs' conceptualizations of various client types and related risk behavior patterns using semistructured interviews with 46 FSWs in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where FSWs' HIV/STI prevalence i…
Eyes that don't see, heart that doesn't feel
Is Wellbeing Possible when You Are Out of Place?’
Social scientists studying forced migration are confronted with raw human experiences under extreme conditions, but also bear witness to the strength reflected in how people endure and reorganize. Cities in developing countries are the destination of the majority of the world’s refugees. In light of recent policies for urban refugees and alternatives to camps and an increased focus on resilience-building programmes by humanitarian agencies, globa…
Hope Amidst Horror
Sensationalistic media coverage has fueled stereotypes of the Mexican border city of Tijuana as a violent battleground of the global drug war. While the drug war shapes health and social harms in profoundly public ways, less visible are the experiences and practices of hope that forge communities of care and represent more private responses to this crisis. In this article, we draw on ethnographic fieldwork and photo elicitation with female sex wo…
Love, Trust, and HIV Risk Among Female Sex Workers and Their Intimate Male Partners
Objectives. We examined correlates of love and trust among female sex workers and their noncommercial male partners along the Mexico–US border. Methods. From 2011 to 2012, 322 partners in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, completed assessments of love and trust. Cross-sectional dyadic regression analyses identified associations of relationship characteristics and HIV risk behaviors with love and trust. Results. Within 161 couples, love and trust…
Sex Work, Heroin Injection, and HIV Risk in Tijuana
The relationships between female sex workers and their noncommercial male partners are typically viewed as sites of HIV risk rather than meaningful unions. This ethnographic case study presents a nuanced portrayal of the relationship between Cindy and Beto, a female sex worker who injects drugs and her intimate, noncommercial partner who live in Tijuana, Mexico. On the basis of ethnographic research in Tijuana and our long-term involvement in a p…
Cessation Clauses, Uncertain Futures and Wellbeing among Rwandan Urban Refugees in Cameroon
Over half of the world’s displaced persons live in urban areas of developing countries. As they settle into countries with already strained health services, urban refugees face a unique set of challenges related to accessing social and mental health services. Humanitarian policy can inadvertently exacerbate these problems. This article discusses the intersection of humanitarian policy and physical and mental wellbeing among the Rwandan urban-refu…
A Mixed Methods Study of the Social Support Networks of Female Sex Workers and Their Primary Noncommercial Male Partners in Tijuana, Mexico
Female sex workers (FSWs) are at risk for multiple health harms, including HIV. This article describes a mixed methods study of the social support networks of 19 FSWs and their primary male sex partners in Tijuana, Mexico. We collected quantitative and qualitative social network data, including quantitative network measures, qualitative narratives, and network visualizations. Methodologically, we illustrate how a convergent mixed methods approach…
Prevalence and Correlates of HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections among Female Sex Workers and Their Non-commercial Male Partners in Two Mexico-USA Border Cities
Introduction
Funding agencies and institutions are increasingly requiring researchers to involve communities and make their work more broadly accessible. The problem is that researchers new to health equity research, and sometimes even people who have engaged in this work for a while, may not sufficiently appreciate the challenges and systemic institutional transformations that must occur to achieve equity. To make pretty words meaningful requires a return to…
Learning from women who trade sex in Kenya about the antiblackness of Global Health
Sex work and violence have become co-constituted, routinized, and even sanitized in Global Health journals dispassionately advocating for intervention. This paper situates ethnographically shared experiences of Kenyan sex working women within the global condition of antiblackness. By grounding our conceptual analytic in Black Feminist scholarship, we illustrate how antiblackness subtends the conditions of possibility for women's entry into sex wo…
Death poems for Cindy
HIV/Aids in the Caribbean Basin
After Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean Basin has the second highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. The number of HIV cases in the region is likely to increase significantly over the next decade due to patterns of sexual behaviour, drug use, migration, and the sociocultural practices and legal and religious taboos which serve as barriers to safe sex, as well as stigma, shame, and denial which preclude many issues from being openly discussed and a…
Managing la malilla
Our results point to the need for political, economic, and social investment in the drug treatment system before offenders are sentenced to treatment under the revised national drug law. Resources are needed to strengthen program quality and ensure accountability. The public health impact of the new legislation that attempts to bring drug treatment to the forefront of national drug policy should be systematically evaluated
Study protocol for the recruitment of female sex workers and their non-commercial partners into couple-based HIV research
The protocol successfully enrolled 214 high risk couples into a multi-site public health study. This work suggests the importance of collaborating to construct a study protocol, understanding the local population and context, and drawing on multiple sources of input to determine eligibility and verify the legitimacy of relationships. We provide a practical set of tools that other researchers should find helpful in the study of high risk couples i…
Acceptability of vaginal microbicides among female sex workers and their intimate male partners in two Mexico–US border cities
Female sex workers (FSWs) may benefit from pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) including microbicides for HIV prevention. Since adherence is a key factor in PrEP efficacy, we explored microbicide acceptability and potential barriers to use within FSWs' intimate relationships in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where HIV prevalence is increasing. FSWs and their verified intimate (non-commercial) male partners completed quantitative and qualitative i…
Where sex ends and emotions begin’
This study explores the affective dimensions of female sex workers' relationships with their intimate, non-commercial partners and assesses how emotions shape each partner's sexual and drug-related risk within their relationship. We draw on qualitative data from a study of HIV, sexually transmitted infections and high-risk behaviours among female sex workers and their non-commercial partners in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to illustrate tha…
Can't Buy My Love
Female sex workers (FSWs) experience elevated risk for HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) through unprotected sex with male clients, yet the complexity of these commercial relationships remains understudied. From 2010 to 2011, we explored FSWs' conceptualizations of various client types and related risk behavior patterns using semistructured interviews with 46 FSWs in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where FSWs' HIV/STI prevalence i…
Eyes that don't see, heart that doesn't feel
“When You Get Old Like This … You Don't Run Those Risks Anymore”
Client Perspectives on Design and Implementation of a Couples-Based Intervention to Reduce Sexual and Drug Risk Behaviors Among Female Sex Workers and Their Noncommercial Partners in Tijuana and Ciuda…
Women's Perspectives on Female-Initiated Barrier Methods for the Prevention of HIV in the Context of Methamphetamine Use and Partner Violence
Rethinking risk
Prevalence and Correlates of HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections among Female Sex Workers and Their Non-commercial Male Partners in Two Mexico-USA Border Cities
Live to tell
Love, Trust, and HIV Risk Among Female Sex Workers and Their Intimate Male Partners
Objectives. We examined correlates of love and trust among female sex workers and their noncommercial male partners along the Mexico–US border. Methods. From 2011 to 2012, 322 partners in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, completed assessments of love and trust. Cross-sectional dyadic regression analyses identified associations of relationship characteristics and HIV risk behaviors with love and trust. Results. Within 161 couples, love and trust…
Sex Work, Heroin Injection, and HIV Risk in Tijuana
The relationships between female sex workers and their noncommercial male partners are typically viewed as sites of HIV risk rather than meaningful unions. This ethnographic case study presents a nuanced portrayal of the relationship between Cindy and Beto, a female sex worker who injects drugs and her intimate, noncommercial partner who live in Tijuana, Mexico. On the basis of ethnographic research in Tijuana and our long-term involvement in a p…
An ethnographic exploration of drug markets in Kisumu, Kenya
Introduction to the Special Issue
Practicing International
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Nancy Romero-Daza, David Himmelgreen, Alissa Ruth, Amber Wutich, Alexandra Brewis, Bonnie Taub, Reza Jarrahy, Cecilia Vindrola-Padros, Jennifer L. Syvertsen, Andy Guise, Jessica Healy-Profitós, Barbara A. Piperata, Mark Moritz, Jiyoung L…
Down in the valley
A Mixed Methods Study of the Social Support Networks of Female Sex Workers and Their Primary Noncommercial Male Partners in Tijuana, Mexico
Female sex workers (FSWs) are at risk for multiple health harms, including HIV. This article describes a mixed methods study of the social support networks of 19 FSWs and their primary male sex partners in Tijuana, Mexico. We collected quantitative and qualitative social network data, including quantitative network measures, qualitative narratives, and network visualizations. Methodologically, we illustrate how a convergent mixed methods approach…
Hope Amidst Horror
Sensationalistic media coverage has fueled stereotypes of the Mexican border city of Tijuana as a violent battleground of the global drug war. While the drug war shapes health and social harms in profoundly public ways, less visible are the experiences and practices of hope that forge communities of care and represent more private responses to this crisis. In this article, we draw on ethnographic fieldwork and photo elicitation with female sex wo…
Perspectives on biomedical HIV prevention options among women who inject drugs in Kenya
Due to heightened vulnerability to HIV from frequent engagement in sex work and overlapping drug-using and sexual networks, women who inject drugs should be a high priority population for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and other biomedical HIV prevention tools. Kenya is one of the first African countries to approve oral PrEP for HIV prevention among "key populations," including people who inject drugs and sex workers. The objective of this study…
He’s not my pimp’
Female sex work is often perceived as women being controlled by men. We used surveys and qualitative interviews with female sex workers and their intimate partners in two Northern Mexico cities to examine couples' own perceptions of their relationships and male partners' involvement in sex work. Among 214 couples, the median age was 34 and relationship duration was approximately 3 years. Only 10 women in the survey reported having a pimp, and the…
Negotiating sexual safety in the era of biomedical HIV prevention
Up to two-thirds of new cases of HIV transmission between gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in the USA are attributed to primary relationships. Understanding the relationship dynamics and sexual agreements of male-male couples can provide insight into HIV transmission patterns and prevention needs in this population. The daily use of antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is highly effective in preventing HIV, but its nego…
Stigma at every turn
Medicine (34 obras) · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk (28 obras) · Sociology (24 obras) · Sex work and related issues (23 obras) · HIV/AIDS Research and Interventions (20 obras) · Psychology (20 obras) · Psychiatry (19 obras) · Political science (16 obras) · Environmental health (14 obras) · Family medicine (13 obras)