 The effect of combat exposure on sexually transmitted diseasesEconomics & Human Biology, 2022, vol. 46, issue C Abstract: Traumatic exposures can affect beliefs and behaviors related to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), a persistent public health problem. I leverage a natural experiment created by variation in US military deployment location assignments to estimate how combat exposure changes a surviving deployed male veteran’s probability of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease. I analyze longitudinal data from 1994 to 2008 on 485 deployed veterans with information theoretic methods to reduce the sensitivity of estimates to small samples, an infrequently observed outcome, and highly correlated covariates. For veterans assigned to a combat zone, I estimate combat exposure results in a 5.4 percentage point increase in the probability of acquiring an STD. Additional estimations provide evidence suggesting risky behaviors involving substance use or multiple sexual partners may serve as pathways from combat exposure to STDs. My results are relevant to discussions regarding STD screening and care needs for trauma exposed individuals. Keywords: Sexually transmitted disease; Traumatic exposure; Combat; Veterans; Military; Health harm (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:46:y:2022:i:c:s1570677x22000387 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2022.101142 Access Statistics for this article Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier |
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