United Men's Health Study, San Francisco, 1994-2002

Beginning in March 1994, the San Francisco Men's Health Study was merged with the San Francisco General Hospital Cohort Study to form the United Men's Health Study. Data collection activities in this phase of the project are restricted to basic surveillance of men known to be HIV-positive. There were 7 waves of data collection between 1994 and 2002. Wave 1 of the UMHS (Surveillance) consisted of 272 cases, interviewed between March and October 1994.

All men known to be HIV positive were contacted by the Survey Research Center. The non-progressors, seroconverters, and a group of controls were invited to come to a clinic to be interviewed, given a physical exam, and asked to provide a blood specimen. Other men who were HIV-positive but did not fall into this group were asked to complete an interview over the telephone. The major focus of these activities are to detect the presence (or absence) of disease progressors among these men.

Please note the attrition rate across the study waves. Attrition may be related to non-response and/or the death of participants. Given the merging of the two studies, and the non-longitudinal structure of these data, response rate was difficult to determine from the available datasets. The Follow-Up file reports the survival status of the participants as of the end of the study, 1 March 2002.

In addition to the main waves of the study, there was a Host Genetics Substudy. The 231 participants in Wave 2 of this United Men's Health Study and 37 additional participants from the Host Genetics Substudy of the San Francisco Men's Health Study were in this substudy. About 30 of the questions were not administered to the 37 additional participants.