Filed under: HIV, sexual health | Tags: education, Prevention, sexual health, STD, STI
Study Reveals Many Infections Undetected by Current Protocol
| Within the past four years, physicians and researchers in U.S. cities with have noticed a marked increase in certain sexually-transmitted diseases, like syphilis and gonorrhea, among gay men. A recent study by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates a two-headed problem in preventing the spread of STDs among the gay population:
1) fewer gay men are going in for testing, 2) the tests to detect the presence of STDs do not always find the infections. In the twenty-five years since the AIDS crisis began, the gay male population in the U.S. has been the target of aggressive public-health and STD-prevention campaigns. By most accounts, these efforts have been successful in drastically decreasing the number of new HIV diagnoses among gay white men and fostering patients’ sense of responsibility for their own health. Since approximately 2004, however, doctors and journalists in the gay press have noticed a backlash against the stringent rules of safer sex, especially among young gay white men—the very population that enjoyed enormous reductions in new infections in the past decade. Article taken from here |
Filed under: HIV | Tags: aids, canada, education, hiv prevention, promotion, social marketing
A quick look at an old campaign from Canada which addresses the issue of positive reinforcement amongst gay men when it comes to safe sex.
“Studies show that gay men fall into three groups: those who take HIV risks frequently, very rarely, and not at all. Three out of four gay men are in the latter two groups – they choose safety,” explains epidemiologist Dr. Tom Lampinen of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV “The really exciting news involves that second kind of guy, the one who takes HIV risks rarely. Real power and potential rests with him. If he can commit to no HIV risk for just one to two years, he will force a decline in new infections.”
The humorous “Gay Men Play Safe” campaign was created to validate and support gay men’s safer sex practices while reinforcing the fact that sexual safety, including condom use, is a community norm. AIDS Vancouver and partner AIDS organizations from across the country worked with Rethink Advertising to create a new kind of HIV message that challenges the widely held perception that gay men suffer from condom-use fatigue and apathy.
“It’s time we recognize gay men for more than 20 years of practicing safer sex and using condoms,” says Phillip Banks, Director of HIV Prevention at AIDS Vancouver and national coordinator of the campaign. “It’s undeniable that gay men’s efforts in the early days of HIV had the greatest impact on reducing HIV infection rates. This campaign validates these efforts and encourages gay men to keep it up.”
According to Dr. Terry Trussler, Research Director at the Community Based Research Centre in Vancouver: “Surveys show that gay men are aware and concerned about the continuing threat to health posed by HIV. This campaign doesn’t threaten or blame gay men. Rather, it acknowledges that as a community, gay men continue to support HIV prevention.”
You can check out the rest of the campaign here
In 1986, the British Government mounted an HIV/AIDS poster and leaflet campaign with the slogan “Don’t Aid AIDS”. This changed into the theme of “Don’t die of ignorance” over the course of the next year. This poster fits in between the two campaigns. It does mirror the television advert by using an image of the word AIDS on a tombstone.
