Testing and Hearing HIV Test Results Together

via The Associated Press, by Carla K. Johnson

CHICAGO — Newly dating and slightly anxious, two men bared their arms for blood tests and pondered the possibility that one of them, or both, could be infected with HIV.

An innovative program — called Testing Together — would allow them to hear their test results minutes later, while sitting side by side.

In this Jan. 5, 2012 photo, Dominic Poteste, left, and Eric Zemanovic pose before taking HIV tests together at the Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago.

Testing Together, now under way in Chicago and Atlanta, takes an unusual approach: It encourages gay male couples to get tested together and hear their results together.

In this Jan. 5, 2012 photo, Dominic Poteste, left, and Eric Zemanovic pose before taking HIV tests together at the Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago.

Testing Together, now under way in Chicago and Atlanta, takes an unusual approach: It encourages gay male couples to get tested together and hear their results together. 

.Eric Zemanovic, a dental hygienist, and Dominic Poteste, a restaurant server, had been dating two months after a yearlong friendship. In the past, they'd both practiced safe sex and got regular HIV tests.

Both are in their early 30s. They'd grown up when AIDS meant an early, horrible death. So, whenever they heard about friends testing positive, they felt pangs of fear.

Poteste explained: "There's always an anxiety that comes with getting tested, even though 99 percent of the time I've been safe and been careful, there still is always ..."

His voice trailed off.

"A slight possibility," Zemanovic completed the sentence.

"A slight possibility," Poteste agreed.

Testing Together, now under way in Chicago and Atlanta, takes an unusual approach: It encourages gay male couples to get tested together and hear their results together.

After delivering the results, a counselor talks with the couple about what to do next, including agreements they may want to make with each other about sex and health.

Are we agreeing to be monogamous? Is any sexual activity outside the relationship OK? How are we going to protect each other from infection? Couples address these questions and more.

The idea is to bring honesty to sexual relationships, said one of the researchers behind the program, Rob Stephenson of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta.

Relationships offer only "mythical protection" from HIV, Stephenson said. Some couples may have avoided talking about each other's HIV status, thinking, "If he were HIV positive he would have told me," or "If he wanted to know, he would have asked."

Poteste and Zemanovic, the newly dating Chicago couple, differed in their past approaches. Zemanovic was in the habit of asking his sex partners about their HIV status; he was "neurotic" about it, he said.

Poteste hadn't been as sexually active as his new boyfriend, but he hadn't always asked the questions: Have you been tested? What's your status?

"You have an assumption that if there's something this person could do to potentially hurt me, they would tell me," he said.

Zemanovic hoped getting tested together and discussing results with a counselor would build trust between them.

Poteste hoped the counselor could help them start a conversation so they could ask and answer difficult questions.

It started in Africa more than 20 years ago. Researchers believe couples testing has successfully reduced the spread of AIDS among married, heterosexual couples in some African regions.

One study that looked at couples where one spouse is HIV positive and the other is HIV negative estimated that couples testing was cutting the rate of transmission by more than half.

In Washington, D.C., where the rate of HIV infection rivals some African nations, some community agencies allow couples to test together. Family and Medical Counseling Service Inc. has been testing about 145 couples together annually since 2008. Most are heterosexual couples.

In Chicago and Atlanta, Testing Together, funded by the MAC AIDS Fund, hopes to test 400 couples by the end of the year.
___
Each participant in Testing Together signs a consent form that addresses receiving counseling, testing and results with a partner in the same room at the same time with a trained counselor: "I hereby consent to allow my partner to know the results of my HIV test," it begins.

The program challenges conventional practices in the United States, where HIV testing is usually private and for individuals only. At most other clinics, a man who asks if his partner can be there when he hears his test result is denied because of patient confidentiality concerns.

There are two trends fueling Testing Together. One, the number of gay Americans telling the U.S. Census they're living with same-sex partners nearly doubled in the past decade, to about 650,000 couples. About half those same-sex partnerships are gay men.

What's more, a new line of research suggests that up to 68 percent of new HIV infections in gay men come from a main sex partner, not from casual sex, in part because main sex partners are more likely to forgo condoms.

Counselors are trained on how to deliver test results, with particular emphasis on how to tell partners the most difficult news: one partner has the virus and the other doesn't.

With these so-called "HIV discordant" couples, counselors have a great opportunity to reduce the spread of the virus by helping the couple learn ways to protect the uninfected partner, primarily through correct and consistent condom use.

Counselors are trained to dispel myths. If the couple thinks the test result means one partner has been unfaithful, the counselor might point out that the infected partner could have acquired HIV before the partner became a couple.

If the couple believes the virus is "sleeping" and can't be transmitted, the counselor might explain that HIV can be transmitted even if there are no signs or symptoms.

If the couple believes their status is proof that precautions aren't needed, the counselor might explain that HIV could be transmitted in the future as the infected partner's virus levels rise.

Sam Hoehnle is a counselor in the Chicago program. "It never becomes easier emotionally" to deliver the news to an HIV discordant couple, Hoehnle said. He tells the HIV negative partner his results first, then spends more time and attention on the HIV positive partner.

He's seen partners support each other, but he acknowledges he can't read minds. A show of compassion could mask anger or fear.

"You don't know what's happening internally, in their heads, about how they're feeling about each other," he said.


Read the rest

The Safety Spectrum: Negotiating Strategies and HIV Risk

via aidsmap, by Gus Cairns

The vast majority of gay men, HIV-positive and negative, make some effort to moderate their risk of transmitting or acquiring HIV, Dr Limin Mao of the University of New South Wales in Australia told the Tenth AIDS Impact conference.

The results of three annual surveys show that the decisions faced by gay men are much more complex than the decision whether or not to use a condom.

Choices range in terms of the likely degree of protection from HIV they offer: from avoiding sex or anal sex altogether to at least avoiding unprotected anal sex with someone known to have the opposite HIV status.

Using condoms 100% of the time for anal sex is still the most popular single strategy, the study found, but only a third of HIV-negative men and a quarter of HIV-positive men now do this.

Taken as a whole, strategies involving basing whether to have unprotected anal sex on a partner's HIV status (serosorting) are now at least as popular as consistent condom use.

The study found a clear difference between serosorting practices according to participants' HIV status. The second most popular safer-sex strategy for HIV-negative men was to restrict unprotected sex to an HIV-negative regular partner – a strategy that has been called 'negotiated safety'.

HIV-positive men were less likely to restrict unprotected sex solely to their primary partner; instead the most popular strategies were to limit unprotected anal sex, both with regular and casual partners, to other HIV-positive partners – or at least to try and exclude having it with regular and casual partners not known to be HIV positive.

The study involved three successive Gay Community Periodic Surveys which took place in eight metropolitan locations in Australia between 2007 and 2009.  Before now, national and international surveys have asked gay men whether they use condoms and, more recently, about their and their partners' HIV status.

But this survey also asked whether, in the previous six months, the respondents' safer-sex behaviour was different between regular or casual partners; and it divided the HIV-positive men into those with an undetectable and detectable viral load.

One hundred per cent condom use was still the most popular strategy, but a minority one, being practised by 33.8% of the HIV-negative men, 25.5% of HIV-positive men with an undetectable viral load and 22.5% of HIV-positive men with a detectable viral load.

Read the rest

 

"A Day with HIV in America" Take Your Best Shot!

via PRNewswire

Positively Aware magazine sponsors 2nd annual photo essay to be published in Nov/Dec 2011 issue

Whether you're HIV negative or positive, live with HIV or care for someone with HIV, Positively Aware, is asking people to share their stories through the lens of a camera on one, single day, September 21.

The second annual A Day with HIV in America will capture the collective portrait of those living with HIV to help remove the stigma of HIV and to advance a community of care and support.

Positively Aware, a leading magazine devoted to HIV treatment, is inviting people across America to snap a digital photograph at any time over the course of Wednesday, September 21.

Participants can record a portrait, time with friends and family at work or play, or any moment in the day that helps the world better understand how HIV affects their lives. Photos are to be submitted by September 26 on the A Day with HIV in America web site.

Follow A Day with HIV in America's Facebook page or on Twitter @A_Day_With_HIV to see updates and selected photographs, and to share the site and its vision with friends to help spread the word.

"We're asking all Americans affected by HIV to share with all of us an image of their life living with HIV," said Jeff Berry, editor of Positively Aware.

"Their vantage points captured over a single day will create a rich photographic tapestry of hope, strength and support that will help tear away the stigma of living with HIV in America today."

The final photos selected for the photo essay of A Day with HIV in America will be announced in October 2011 and will be published in the November/December issue of Positively Aware magazine.

 Positively Aware will also premiere the photos at the U.S. Conference on AIDS, November 10-13 in Chicago, Ill.

To learn more about this year's project, see last year's winners and to make your photo submission, visit, A Day with HIV in America.
Read the rest.

HIV researcher plans new PrEP study

via Chelsea Now, By Sam Spokony

[One major factual error in that article: “The longest any HIV-negative person has taken PrEP in a clinical study is 12 weeks.” For example in iPrEx, average follow up was 14 months. Otherwise, a very informative article.]

Few methods of HIV prevention have been as promising, or as controversial, as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). After a history of underground practice and off-label prescriptions, the approach has recently begun to receive serious attention from researchers, policy makers and health care advocates.

Under the guidance of Dr. Roy Gulick (director of the Weill Cornell Medical College HIV Clinical Trials Unit), a new experiment called the NEXT (Novel Explorations of Therapeutics) PrEP Study will begin this fall. It will include 400 at-risk, HIV-negative gay men, and will take place over 48 weeks at 12 sites across the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The NEXT PrEP Study will differ from iPrEx in that its primary experimental group will receive a daily regimen of the drug maraviroc (brand name Selzentry). The control group will receive Truvada, and two other experimental groups will receive combinations of maraviroc and either tenofovir or FTC (the two individual drugs that make up Truvada). A major goal of the study, along with testing the HIV-prevention efficacy of maraviroc, will be to gauge the side effects of the drug on participants.

“The longest any HIV-negative person has taken PrEP in a clinical study is 12 weeks,” Gulick told Chelsea Now in a July 23 phone interview [This is inaccurate. The guys in iPrEx, for instance, were followed about 14 months - LifeLube]. “Now, since this is a drug we’re giving to healthy people, the next step is exploring further to prove that it is both safe and tolerable for them.”

Read more.

He likes it r-w

By Sapphire

Kel and I dated for three months. We met on the subway where he ran after me to tell me how beautiful I was. He was impressive but I wasn’t prepared drama that tagged along.

Kel and I were not compatible. We fought all the time and were completely disrespectful to one another.  There were times when I couldn’t even look at him.  He would buy me something nice to make up for arguments or fights. He thought it would make me happier.-9 times out of ten..It did.

At the time, sex wasn’t a major need for me. I was trying to escape an oversexed lifestyle and having sex with Kel, wasn’t the best idea. There were days when I had sex with three people in a row! A little out of control I know! 

We were a serodiscordant couple (I am HIV positive and he was HIV negative) and my health was very important to me. I thought with Kel, I could turn a new leaf but that was not the case.

Kel LOVED sex. He bugged all the time about sex and the sex he was into was not healthy. Bottom line, Kel was the “raw-topping” type of guy. He never refused to use condoms but there were times when the condom would come off

 It was a pleasure rush but sometimes a headache. It really messed with my head. Why would a HIV negative man want to risk his life contracting HIV from someone he barely knows? It didn’t add up to me. We had discussions about it that went nowhere. He would say “Don’t stress about it” and it really confused me. There were moments when I felt he was lying about his status. Does he know how HIV is affecting gay men today? Was he trying to get infected? Is he ready to live with the virus?

After much reflection, I broke up with him. I couldn’t keep putting his life or mine in danger. I followed up with my doctor about my behavior and got myself checked out. Everything was fine and I felt like I dodged a bullet. I am glad that we communicated about each other’s HIV status but upset we didn’t make healthy choices around that. Understanding that condom negotiation is not easy, I had to develop better about my communication skill for the next guy. Trust me- it’s better now.

Thank Goddess for Negative Gay Men!

Calling HIV Negative Gay Men: This is Your Time

via My Fabulous Disease, by Mark S. King


This is directed to HIV negative gay men. Listen carefully. This is your time.

I’ve lived with HIV more than half my life, and people often praise me far more than I deserve, simply for surviving. They use words like brave and courageous.

You know what takes courage? Getting an HIV test every few months. You, waiting nervously while your most personal sexual choices are literally being tested, waiting to find out if you’ve been good – or if you’re going to pay for a single lapse in judgment by testing positive, when the look on the faces of your friends will say you should have known better.

I have no idea what that must be like. I took the test over 25 years ago. The positive result was traumatic, no doubt about it, and I soldiered on during some awfully frightening times. But I have a significant psychological advantage over my HIV negative friends: I only took that damn test once.

During all these years, I’ve acted irresponsibly at times or taken chances I hadn’t intended. But there has been no further judgment from a blood test. That reckoning was faced long ago.

But you – whether you have been sexually active for a year or a decade – have very likely faced some tough choices and behaved wisely. You keep doing the right thing.

This is your time. The word courageous is for you.

Read the rest.

"To this day I'm HIV-negative"

Deciding Moments, via we>aids

Posting Your HIV Status and Hooking Up Online - What's Yours?

via Adam4Adam blogger Stephan

Marketing is generally the driving force in all sales efforts; that includes the sale of one’s self.

Hooking-up online has it’s advantages: advantages that can get you laid quickly and matched with just the right guy. One of the advantages found in profiles are that they can tell you what a guy is into, where he is, what he looks like, and when he is available. Profiles are the online marketing tools of those seeking sex. When accurate and honest, a well written profile can reduce the talk required before meeting a sexual match to a couple of emails and help to ensure you have a great time with the right guy. When a profile is completed with detailed information, the information posted can effectively weed out those you are not interested in meeting, and invite those you want to meet. Profiles are great marketing tools!

When members join Adam4Adam seeking a sex partner, what goes in your profile—your marketing tool—will ultimately help to determine what happens sexually between you and other members of the site.

Profiles on Adam4Adam, as on most sex seeking sites, have the option to disclose your HIV status (blank, negative, positive, don’t know). The primary reason this field exists is to provide the option to include your HIV status, if known, under the belief that having this information is important to the health of other members and will help you find a sexual match.

The fields are clear, yet assumptions regarding any one’s status other than “positive” must be avoided. A status of negative is only as accurate as the testing method, frequency of testing, and sexual behaviors since being tested (and about 3 months before) of the person claiming to be negative.

Having HIV status in profiles is not always welcomed by all members. As I see it, there are two sides to this debate: those that believe that the field lends an unjust creditability to someone stating they are HIV-negative and those that believe that having the field is a form of risk reduction.

I believe that having an HIV status field is important. I also understand that men lie. There are most likely men that believe when someone states they are HIV-negative, that it absolutely means they are HIV-negative. In fact, there are too many variables for many sexually active men to state with no doubt that they are in fact negative and be 100% sure and accurate.

Consider this: if someone lies about their HIV status online, would they not also lie in person?

Further consider which is a more misleading statement of ‘safety’ a field on a profile or a face to face statement? What would you give more creditability, a face to face statement that “I am negative”, or a field in a profile that says negative? I would personally be more apt to believe someone who told me face to face that they are negative over what I read in a profile. HIV status, field or not, is a conversation.

One of the key issues, in my viewpoint, is not the HIV status field, but it is understanding what a statement like HIV-negative really means, especially in our “buyer beware” world of sales and marketing.

How one discloses their status is a personal choice, but disclosing your HIV status honestly is a responsibility we all share, regardless of what we know our status to be, or what we assume it to be.

Celebrating HIV-Negative Gay Men

My Fabulous Disease
In Praise of HIV-Negative Gay Men
by Mark S. King

Sometimes it seems there is a silent, wary truce between those of us who are positive and our friends who remain negative. We won't make them feel guilty about being negative if they don't blame us for being positive.

But there are other problematic differences. HIV-negative gay men hear a lot about what they should be doing (or not doing), and not enough about what they are doing well. Meanwhile, those of us living with HIV have been provided services, placed in positions of leadership and exalted in sometimes strange ways. We've certainly needed every bit of support we could get.

By contrast, HIV-negative men have had to plod along, making the best choices they could to remain negative, fearing every blood test, and often watching friends become infected with HIV. It is crucial that people living with HIV have a strong voice in this pandemic and that (our) needs are met, that's clear. I just wonder if HIV-negative gay men get a little tired of being overlooked because they ... never became infected?

So in the spirit of everyone getting the attention they deserve in our community, allow me about two minutes to throw a party for HIV-negative gay men.

Click to watch.

Living the Question: Would you date someone who is HIV-positive?

via Advocate by Tyler Helms

Ironically, my answer before June 2007 would have been a confident “no,” my rationale being that the risks were too high and my future too bright to be burdened with someone else’s mistake.

  It’s a loaded question coming from me — my friends, my family, and even people who barely know me are biased in their answers. I have found the most honest responses come when I catch people off guard. I once asked my friend John in a text message, his response first being “Really, this is what you text me?” My friend Lesley has gotten it at dinner, drinks, and while at work. There is my friend Michael, who asked me the question before I could ask him.

Answers have varied, but they generally net out in one place — “Yes, but with caution and care.” At which point I wonder, shouldn’t every relationship be approached with “caution and care?” And “yes,“ while common, doesn’t seem to be the reality I face. A few people, hands down, say “no.” I have experience with the “no” firsthand. I have vivid memories of the poor guy who ran from my apartment when he saw the framed Worlds AIDS Day picture and the red ribbon that sits on my bedside table. I can’t help but recall the countless faces that used to consider a random make-out session, now resigned to whispers or words of support. So despite a world where HIV status is now a check box on social networking profiles, I tend to think that being with someone HIV-positive is still too much for many to handle.

Read the rest.

Discussion: Laying It Bare: Gay Men and Unprotected Sex in the Age of HIV/AIDS

TheBody.com recently hosted a panel discussion - via teleconference - on unprotected sex among gay men.Absolutely fascinating, engaging and illuminating - a must for any and all interested in gay men's health.

Click here for the audio and a transcript.

The call was moderated by fogcityjohn and included Walt Odets, Rashad Burgess and Jeffrey Parsons.

- Select quotes -

Walt Odets: It's a natural behavior, and it's of emotional significance. And I think gay men naturally engage in it. We have liked to feel that it was somehow dispensable -- and it's really not, emotionally. So, again, we haven't helped men to think about what they are doing. It's a very narrow range in which HIV is transmitted. Anal sex has the emotional import for gay men that vaginal intercourse has for heterosexuals. And it can't be dismissed. And we can't expect that that's going to done all the time, under any circumstances, with a condom. It's compelling. It's emotionally compelling. 

Rashad Burgess: We, as Americans, [need to] recognize the value of gay men, in all of our lives, in the many facets of our lives -- whether it be the business owners, whether it be folks' uncles, or family members, other types of family members, the partners that gay men have. Because it is a community that, it's imperative, understands that their lives -- and as a gay man, that our lives, and my life -- is worth saving. 

Jeffrey Parsons: We do sometimes forget about the group of gay men who are out there -- and it's a large group -- who are very happy, very satisfied. They're not depressed. They're not lonely. They're not engaged in risk behaviors. They're not seroconverting. They're actually doing very well. And I think -- and I can certainly say this as a researcher -- that too often we don't get to focus on that group. We don't get to actually talk to them and research them and find out: What are they doing to stay safe, and to stay healthy, and to stay well adjusted?

Read, listen to the whole thing here.

Canada judge: Insertive unprotected anal sex does not create 'significant risk of serious bodily harm'

via Aidsmap, by Edwin J. Bernard

A Canadian judge has ruled for the first time that an HIV-negative person is not placed at 'a significant risk of serious bodily harm' if they are the insertive partner in unprotected anal intercourse with an HIV-positive man.

According to a statement from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network this "reinforces the basic point that not every risk of transmission will be considered 'significant', and illustrates the importance of ensuring that courts consider carefully the scientific evidence before them in determining when there is a 'significant risk' of harm, rather than simply criminalising non-disclosure in all circumstances."

Read the rest.

Free Rapid HIV Testing - Center on Halsted

Click to enlarge. Click for info.

Free Rapid HIV Testing - Center on Halsted

Click to enlarge. Click for info.

How many guys are "sero-adapting" in San Francisco?

via U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Medical News

Prevalence of Seroadaptive Behaviors of Men Who Have Sex With Men, San Francisco, 2004

The researchers set out to define and measure the prevalence of HIV seroadaptive behaviors among men who have sex with men (MSM). Time-location sampling was used to recruit a community-based, cross-sectional sample of 1,211 HIV-negative and 251 HIV-positive MSM in San Francisco in 2004.

To define seroadaptive behaviors, all episodes of anal intercourse were enumerated and characterized by partner type, partner HIV serostatus, sexual position, and condom use for up to five partners in the preceding six months.

The results showed that 37.6 percent of HIV-negative MSM engaged in some form of seroadaptive behavior: pure serosorting (24.7 percent), seropositioning (5.9 percent), condom serosorting (3.9 percent), and negotiated safety (3.1 percent). Some form of seroadaptation was noted for 43.4 percent of HIV-positive men -- including pure serosorting (19.5 percent), seropositioning (14.3 percent), and condom serosorting (9.6 percent). Consistent use of condoms was reported by 37.1 percent of HIV-negative men and 20.7 percent of HIV-positive men.

"In aggregate, seroadaptive behaviors appear to be the most common HIV prevention strategy adopted by MSM in San Francisco as of 2004," the authors concluded. "Surveillance and epidemiological studies need to precisely measure seroadaptive behaviors in order to gauge and track the true level of HIV risk in populations. Rigorous prevention research is needed to assess the efficacy of seroadaptive behaviors on individuals' risk and on the epidemic."

Check out other LifeLube posts on this topic:

sero-adaptation 

sero-sorting 

seroguessing 

Hope Takes Action - DO YOU?

Resilient?

Fantasies have to be expressed, channeled

If I was more inclined to have anal sex more, especially receptively, I would probably be more inclined to do it raw, because of my eroticization of raw sex.

by Charles Stephens
Read more LifeLube posts from Charles

I am a 29-year-old black gay male and I’m HIV-negative.

Of the group of gay men I came out with, three have died, and I am now one of the few left in my social network that’s still HIV-negative.

I don’t see my being HIV-negative as the result of “good choices,” I’ve made, verses “bad choices,” I’ve avoided. I don’t see being HIV-negative as a prize for good behavior. To me it’s been more a matter of inclination, even if this inclination has produced a kind of “resilience factor,” for me.

I have sought to have a fulfilling, open, and interesting sexual life, and remain HIV-negative along the way. To some degree I think I’ve managed to achieve this, even as I’ve created boundaries for myself. I believe that my being HIV-negative has to do, more than anything else, with my lack of receptive raw anal sex, and my overall ambivalence around anal sex in general. To be more clear, if I was more inclined to have anal sex more, especially receptively, I would probably be more inclined to do it raw, because of my eroticization of raw sex. My lack of engagement with receptive anal sex has more to do with the discomfort it causes me, rather than some moral stance, so the logistics of the act, creates a kind of covert protective factor. But I still eroticize anal sex, particularly raw anal sex, even though I do it infrequently, and have sought ways to channel those desires in a different direction.

I yearn for other HIV-negative gay men to tell their stories, and share their strategies, especially those like me, that don’t like condoms, eroticize semen, exist in high prevalence HIV sexual networks, and develop strategies to remain HIV-negative.

My rule for the most part is to keep semen out of my mouth and ass. And if I choose to indulge in that particular pleasure, I would identify strategies to do so that would reduce my risk along the way. Even though I don’t think sex is ever completely rational, I do believe I can be deliberate and intentional.

I think bareback porn could potentially be an HIV prevention strategy.

Once I was with a guy that wanted to penetrate me condomless. I did not want to do it. Or rather I wanted to do it, but chose not to do it. This has not been the case every time, but was the case this time. We ended up masturbating together, while he narrated to me his fantasy of barebacking with me, ejaculating inside me, feeling the inside of me raw. I found this extremely powerful and the fantasy hot. We were able to engage in a very intense way, our sexual fantasies, without actually doing it, all the way. Our orgasms were powerful, even if his semen was collected on to his bellybutton and not in my rectum. I also watch bareback porn, gay and straight, and find that an effective way to channel my desires. I think bareback porn could potentially be an HIV prevention strategy. Fantasies have to be expressed, channeled. Must be. In the theater of the erotic arts, we have an opportunity to witness visually the sexual archetypes and fetishes that structure our psyches and animate our fantasies. Those are two imperfect strategies that I have found effective for the moment.

The gap that I’ve found in HIV prevention, is the lack of engagement around HIV-negative men that remain negative. Eric Rofes years ago, called for support groups for HIV-negative gay men. Spaces. This still has not happen on a large scale, and I believe strongly that it’s necessary.

Thus, I’m calling for an HIV prevention agenda for gay men that would include three things:

(1) An exploration of how gay men, particularly black gay men, have remained and continue to remain HIV-negative, especially those like me, that have a dissaffinity for condoms. What strategies have they used? Those that has existed in and fucked in sexual networks and contexts with high HIV prevalence that remain negative should be studied and interviewed rigorously. Urgently.

(2) An STI prevention workshop for gay men that like to have raw sex. Not just a list of strategies or tips, but a workshop, that can be replicated within community-based organizations and centers for gay men targeting gay men that bareback.

And (3), spaces for gay men that are HIV-negative that can talk about their ambivalence, their desires, and their challenges in a supportive and affirming environment.

Is there some resilience I have that has guided me, facilitated my remaining HIV-negative? I don’t know. I’ve been thinking a lot about this since the brilliant Walt Senterfitt referenced the notion of resilience to me, and it’s value in thinking about gay men’s sexual health. One thing is for sure, the notion of resilience in gay men’s health, and not just as it relates to sexual health but also mental health and other realms, could provide some really valuable strategies as we map out our collective destiny.

Charles Stephens is an Atlanta-based gay men’s health advocate and writer.

CHICAGO: Men 18-45 yrs old Needed for HIV Vaccine Research Study

Men 18-45 yrs old Needed for HIV Vaccine Research Study

HIV negative men, who are circumcised and 18-45 years old are needed to participate in an HIV Vaccine research study. Subjects will receive compensation for participating. The study should last approximately 3 years. Subjects cannot get HIV from the vaccine. This is a randomized study which means you may get the vaccine or a placebo.

The Principal Investigator for this study is Dr. Richard M. Novak, Dept. of Medicine, 840 S Wood. For more information, please call 800-575-5758, 312-413-8597 or email wish@uic.edu

Also. visit Hope Takes Action for tons of info on this trial.

Protocol # 2009-0355

Do you have an HIV detector?

Prepping for a prevention trial, and unexpected homophobia

Prepping for a PrEP trial
Critical observations before the study even begins
via Positively Aware, by Keith R. Green

I asked him how he addressed homosexuality during his church prevention work. His response made my head spin.

I recently accepted a position as Project Director for a research study designed to assess the initial acceptability and feasibility of a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) trial among young men who have sex with men (YMSM) in Chicago.

The concept of PrEP, in a nutshell, involves administering medications used in the treatment of HIV (particularly Viread or Truvada at this point) to “high risk” HIV-negative individuals, in hopes of preventing transmission of the virus. Several PrEP trials are currently underway across the globe, many of which will likely demonstrate the efficacy of both Viread and Truvada as biomedical interventions for the prevention of HIV.

Though young men who have sex with men, particularly those of color, continue to contract HIV at alarming rates, these current trials ironically have very few young men enrolled in them. Therefore, if in fact these studies are able to prove the effectiveness of PrEP, we will know very little about its implementation within the population that could benefit most from this technology. The PrEP study that I am involved with seeks to provide some insight into this.

For this study, we will attempt to recruit 99 YMSM between the ages of 18 and 22, and to follow them for six months.

There are three separate arms in the study. All participants will go through an intensive evidence-based behavioral intervention and then be randomized to one of three groups. One group will receive once-daily Truvada, another group will receive a placebo (or sugar pill), and yet another group will receive nothing. Participants will be regularly monitored for HIV seroconversion, behavioral disinhibition (getting buck wild sexually because they feel that they are protected by PrEP), and any adverse effects (among a host of other things).

Aware of my search to hire research assistants who will largely be responsible for recruiting and retaining participants, a close friend recommended a friend of his for one of the positions. Trusting the judgment of my friend, I followed up on his recommendation and called his friend to arrange an interview.

Read the rest.