Further Exploring the Public Health Implications of the Network Scale-Up Method: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.

In addition to being used to estimate the size of the population of people who inject drugs, the NSUM revealed that they have smaller-sized personal social networks while concealing their drug use, and these underlying population characteristics are extremely useful for planning appropriate service delivery approaches with the fewest barriers for people who inject drugs to access HIV prevention services. Therefore, more cost-effectiveness brings new public health implications for the NSUM, which makes it even more promising for its application.