Limitations
Findings should be considered in light of several limitations. Participants were not asked to report their sex assigned at birth or their gender identity. Rather, interviewers recorded a participant as “male” or “female” based on appearance. Therefore, some participants’ gender identity could have been misreported. Second, as noted previously, conclusions about the overall size or gender composition of participants’ injection networks beyond what was represented in the study cannot be drawn, as participants recruited only two (i.e., not all) members of their injection networks to join the study, and information about their broader networks was not collected. Indeed, had participants’ full injection networks been included, then our findings may certainly differ. Researchers may wish to consider the feasibility of including a sample’s full injection network in future intervention studies. Though the proportion of women who participated in the study was comparable to nationwide population estimates of PWID [