Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Mar 17;20(1):344.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-020-8438-x.

Clustering of chronic hepatitis B screening intentions in social networks of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands

Nora Hamdiui  1   2   3 , Vincent Buskens  4 , Jim E van Steenbergen  5   6 , Mirjam E E Kretzschmar  7   8 , Luis E C Rocha  9 , Anna E Thorson  10 , Aura Timen  5   11 , Albert Wong  12 , Maria van den Muijsenbergh  13   14 , Mart L Stein  5
Affiliations

Clustering of chronic hepatitis B screening intentions in social networks of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands

Nora Hamdiui et al. BMC Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Early detection, identification, and treatment of chronic hepatitis B through screening is vital for those at increased risk, e.g. born in hepatitis B endemic countries. In the Netherlands, Moroccan immigrants show low participation rates in health-related screening programmes. Since social networks influence health behaviour, we investigated whether similar screening intentions for chronic hepatitis B cluster within social networks of Moroccan immigrants.

Methods: We used respondent-driven sampling (RDS) where each participant ("recruiter") was asked to complete a questionnaire and to recruit three Moroccans ("recruitees") from their social network. Logistic regression analyses were used to analyse whether the recruiters' intention to request a screening test was similar to the intention of their recruitees.

Results: We sampled 354 recruiter-recruitee pairs: for 154 pairs both participants had a positive screening intention, for 68 pairs both had a negative screening intention, and the remaining 132 pairs had a discordant intention to request a screening test. A tie between a recruiter and recruitee was associated with having the same screening intention, after correction for sociodemographic variables (OR 1.70 [1.15-2.51]).

Conclusions: The findings of our pilot study show clustering of screening intention among individuals in the same network. This provides opportunities for social network interventions to encourage participation in hepatitis B screening initiatives.

Keywords: Hepatitis B; Intention; Moroccan immigrants; Netherlands; Respondent-driven sampling; Screening; Social networks.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
(a). Recruitment tree with only RDS ties, (b). Recruitment tree with only venue ties, (c). Recruitment tree with both RDS ties and venue ties
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Data structure of clusters and pairs. By using robust standard errors adapted for multi-way clustering, pairs with at least one participant in the same cluster (see pair A and pair B for example) are considered dependent observations. Pairs without participants in the same clusters (see pair A and pair E for example) are considered independent observations
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Screening intention among Moroccan immigrants (‘Intention request’). Those recruited offline are presented as nodes with a transparent border, those recruited online are presented as nodes with a black border, and seeds are nodes with a black dot in the centre
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. World Health Organization (WHO). Hepatitis B. Fact sheet n°204 2015 [Available from: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs204/en/].
    1. Ahmad AA, Falla AM, Duffell E, Noori T, Bechini A, Reintjes R, et al. Estimating the scale of chronic hepatitis B virus infection among migrants in EU/EEA countries. BMC Infect Dis. 2018;18(1):34. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hahne SJ, De Melker HE, Kretzschmar M, Mollema L, Van Der Klis FR, Van Der Sande MA, et al. Prevalence of hepatitis B virus infection in the Netherlands in 1996 and 2007. Epidemiol Infect. 2012;140(8):1469–1480. - PubMed
    1. Toy M, Veldhuijzen IK, Mostert MC, de Man RA, Richardus JH. Transmission routes of hepatitis B virus infection in chronic hepatitis B patients in the Netherlands. J Med Virol. 2008;80(3):399–404. - PubMed
    1. Marschall T, Kretzschmar M, Mangen MJ, Schalm S. High impact of migration on the prevalence of chronic hepatitis B in the Netherlands. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2008;20(12):1214–1225. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources