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Most recent news concerning sexual health

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Facing AIDS theme of National HIV Testing Day

Posted by administrator on June 18, 2013

From AIDS.gov…

Facing AIDS is a digital photo sharing initiative with the goal of reducing HIV-related stigma and promoting HIV testing. Many AIDS.gov blog readers have contributed personal messages to the Facing AIDS photo gallery, most recently in recognition of World AIDS Day (December 1, 2012 – visit the gallery to see the inspiring messages collected over the five years of the initiative). Many of your Facing AIDS messages highlight the importance of confronting stigma and echo the theme of National HIV Testing Day: Take the Test. Take Control. That consistency made it easy for our team to re-purpose the photos into the newest video in our Facing AIDS series. To learn how participate in Facing AIDS, read this blog post. To watch other videos in the Facing AIDS series, please use this playlist Exit Disclaimer. Click here to learn more about locating HIV testing near you. Please watch and share the “Facing AIDS for National HIV Testing Day” video.

Posted in Education, In the News, Video, Consumer Information, Media | Leave a Comment »

Huffington Post blog addresses HIV stigma

Posted by administrator on June 10, 2013

The HIV Shame Game: What Role Do You Play?

 - Freelance columnist and fiction writer; creator, The Needle Prick Project

[...] According to the Center for Disease Control, 44 percent of people who are HIV positive are unaware of their status. Unfortunately, the people who may be perpetuating the shame game may soon find that it is they who need the bath. This is where the real danger lies. Allowing language like this to permeate our culture only serves to promote the continuation of the HIV epidemic and enforce a second viral class among the gay community.

Of course, the burden of change rests on the shoulders of those affected the most by the shame game. It may seem easier for HIV-positive men to retreat into the shadows when friends and strangers alike unknowingly use language that make them feel like a pariah in dignitaries’ clothing. However, many of these accidental offenders are victim of the same phenomenon that was the basis of so much prejudice against gay men and women. They simply don’t have a personal connection to the disease. HIV-positive men owe it to themselves to speak out against language that demeans their worth. They also owe it to their HIV-negative friends to educate them on the reality so that they don’t continue to proliferate stigma or believe that they are removed from risk.

HIV-positive men aren’t victims, vampires, zombies or martyrs. The social and psychological factors surrounding infection are complex, difficult and impossible to simplify into one category.

Of course, the language we use and terminology we’ve chosen to isolate one another is just the one element of the shaming that goes on within the gay community. Combating HIV stigma is a multifarious problem that will require numerous endeavors and will take time before we start seeing measurable change.

Read the full post on The Huffington Post Blog.

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SNAP research to improve the sexual health of black men

Posted by administrator on May 30, 2013

Dr Carl Latkin

Carl Latkin, PhD

 

Dr. Carl Latkin of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health is conducting a paid research study called SNAP. The study aims to explore sexual health promotion strategies among black men and is seeking black men age 18 or older who have had sex with black men and live in Baltimore.

African-American men who have had sex with men and may be: HIV positive/negative; gay, bisexual, same gender loving or straight are asked to call 800-967-5710 or text 443-253-6729. All calls and participation are kept confidential.

 

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Researchers investigate use of PrEP and risk-taking among men who have sex with men

Posted by administrator on May 8, 2013

From U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (posted on TheBody.com)

Truvada (tenofovir) is used for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to reduce risk of HIV infection among risk-taking HIV-negative gay men. Researchers investigated whether use of Truvada as PrEP encouraged risk-taking among men who have sex with men (MSM). The researchers studied 400 gay men for 24 months between 2005 and 2007 in a randomized double-blind placebo study. One group of participants began taking Truvada at the outset of the study and the other began nine months later. Researchers interviewed the men at entry into the study and every three months concerning sexual risk-taking and use of recreational drugs and erectile dysfunction medications.

Participants had an average of 7.25 partners in the three months prior to the study. This number decreased to 6 partners between months 3 and 9 and to 5.71 in the second year. Before baseline, 57 percent of participants reported unprotected anal sex. The number dropped to 48 percent between months 3 and 9, and rose to 52 percent in the second year. Also, at baseline, 29 percent of participants reported unprotected intercourse with a man they knew to be HIV-positive. This number dropped to 21 percent between months 3 and 9 and increased slightly to 22 percent in the second year. Unprotected sex with partners they knew to be HIV-positive decreased from 2 at the beginning of the study to 1.37 during the second year, and unprotected anal intercourse with partners believed to be HIV-negative increased from 2.75 at baseline to 4 during year two.

Findings indicate that the use of Truvada as PrEP did not increase sexual risk-taking among HIV-negative MSM. However, findings are tempered by the fact that the study provided the participants with risk-reduction counseling, condoms and lubricant, routine HIV tests, STD testing, and links to prevention services. The researchers acknowledge that these measures may have affected the observed risk reduction and risk declines.

The full report, “Sexual Risk Behavior Among HIV-Uninfected Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM) Participating in a Tenofovir Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Randomized Trial in the United States,” is published online in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Posted in In the News, Research | Leave a Comment »

May is Hepatitis Awareness Month

Posted by administrator on May 6, 2013

awarenessmonth_211x205From AIDS.gov…

May 1 marks the start of the month-long observance of Hepatitis Awareness Month. The observance is an important element of government-wide efforts to raise awareness about viral hepatitis and decrease health disparities by educating communities about the benefits of viral hepatitis prevention, testing, care, and treatment.

Throughout the month of May, HHS and our partners who support the Action Plan for the Prevention, Care and Treatment of Viral Hepatitis will be engaged in a variety of activities to increase awareness—among the public and healthcare providers—about viral hepatitis, including the importance of testing, the availability of care and treatment, and associated adverse health effects resulting from undiagnosed and untreated viral hepatitis. In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing several blog posts about implementation of the Action Plan. On May 19, we will observe the second annual Hepatitis Testing Day. Viral hepatitis is the leading cause of liver cancer and the most common reason for liver transplantation in the United States. An estimated 4.4 million Americans are living with chronic hepatitis; most do not know they are infected. This places them at greater risk for severe, even fatal, complications from the disease and increases the likelihood that they will spread the virus to others.

Hepatitis Testing Day was established in the Action Plan as a means to raise awareness and educate health care providers and the public about who should be tested for chronic viral hepatitis. Unfortunately, many communities and populations remain uninformed about various facets of viral hepatitis, including associated adverse health effects, the need for testing and care, and the availability of vaccines (for hepatitis A and hepatitis B) and treatment – especially priority populations at high risk for viral hepatitis, such as injection drug users; people living with HIV; gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men; baby boomers (people born between 1945-1965); African Americans; and Asians and Pacific Islanders.

Please join us in promoting both of these important observances—Hepatitis Awareness Month and Hepatitis Testing Day—to enhance public awareness of viral hepatitis prevention, testing, care and treatment across the United States. Here are a few things you can do:

  • Learn more about awareness activities, including testing events, taking place in communities around the country to mark Hepatitis Testing Day. This page from CDC allows people to search for Hepatitis Testing Day events taking place near them in May. Event organizers can also list their events.
  • Review the web badges, digital tools, fact sheets, posters and other resources available from CDC on this page and find one you can use this month.
  • Take this 5-minute online hepatitis risk assessment developed by the CDC and get a personalized report on hepatitis testing and vaccination recommendations.
  • Read more about the Viral Hepatitis Action Plan on our recently updated page.

Won’t you please commit to learning more yourself and/or sharing information about viral hepatitis with at least two other people this month?  Working together, we can raise greater awareness about the epidemic of viral hepatitis in the United States and, in so doing, make great strides in improving the health of persons who are at risk for or living with viral hepatitis.

Posted in Education, Health Alerts, In the News | Leave a Comment »

Task Force calls for every adult to be routinely screened for HIV

Posted by administrator on May 3, 2013

From WebMD…

New guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force call for virtually every adult to be routinely screened for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The updated recommendations, which are published in the April 30 issue of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, suggest that pregnant women and all people aged 15 to 65 be screened for HIV. The guidelines are now more in line with screening recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“HIV is a critical public health problem. There are 50,000 new infections in the U.S. each year, and we need to find ways to prevent and treat it,” said guideline author Dr. Douglas Owens, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a senior investigator at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, in California.

The guidelines, last updated in 2005, reflect new evidence about the effectiveness of treatment, especially when started early in the course of HIV infection.

“The best way to reduce HIV-related death and disability is to avoid getting infected,” Owens said. “Should someone become infected, we want them to understand that there are very good treatments that will help them live longer and reduce transmission.”

Experts agreed that such blanket screening is the best — and possibly only — way to stop the HIV epidemic in its tracks.

Knowing one’s HIV status is “a first step for both prevention and needed medical services, yet the history of the epidemic has set up barriers such that, in some states, it is still not straightforward to access an HIV test without the need for written consent or a fee,” said Dr. Sten Vermund, director of the Institute for Global Health at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. “Free, regular screening for HIV, much as we try to have regular blood pressure or breast cancer screening, is one of the best ways to start reducing the HIV epidemic in the U.S.”

Read the full article on WebMD.

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Latest HIV vaccine doesn’t work; NIH halts study

Posted by administrator on April 29, 2013

From Seattlepi.com…

The latest bad news in the hunt for an AIDS vaccine: The government halted a large U.S. study on Thursday [April 18, 2013] , saying the experimental shots aren’t preventing HIV infection. Nor did the shots reduce the amount of the AIDS virus in the blood when people who’d been vaccinated later became infected, the National Institutes of Health said.

“It’s disappointing,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But, “there was important information gained from this” study that will help determine what to try next.

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/

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Gay social app creators give attention to health and social issue

Posted by administrator on April 25, 2013

From the Huffington Post…

by 

Nowadays there seems to be a mobile app for everything, including dating.

Long before my last breakup, I deleted Grindr, a smartphone app that is a household name in most gay circles, from my phone. Call me old-fashioned, but I wanted to meet people face-to-face. I found it creepy that the application pinpointed my exact location and told perfect strangers how close I was to them, and there was something seedy about texting headless torsos on my little phone’s screen. Even when I was bored, I thought that Grindr simply lacked the kind of fun and sophistication that piqued my interest. Moreover, I had long given up on dating sites such as Adam4Adam, Manhunt and even Gay.com; they’d started to have the feel of a bathhouse or a seedy bar. I decided that there simply was not a market in online dating for those who wanted to meet decent people to chat with.

Was I the last gay man on Earth who did not want to hook up? I was parched for conversation with other gay men. Sure, I have a sexual appetite, but I do draw a line sometime. And then, like a ray of sunshine, a friend suggested that I look into Hornet. “I only have it because I’m bored, but it is pretty awesome and a little like Facebook,” said my friend.

After incredulously scolding my friend for using a what I thought was a gay hookup app while in a relationship, I downloaded it. Incredibly, Hornet was different right off the bat. Not only was the interface user-friendly, but users can literally search the world for someone to talk to and not pay a dime for the service. People were using the app to address social issues like knowing one’s HIV status. I was intrigued.

Read the rest of the article on the Huffingon Post Website.

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April 10th is National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day

Posted by administrator on April 10, 2013

nyhaadcolorlogoNational Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day is a day to educate the public about the impact of HIV and AIDS on young people as well as highlight the amazing work young people are doing across the country to fight the HIV & AIDS epidemic.

Today’s young people are the first generation who have never known a world without HIV and AIDS. In the United States, one in four new HIV infections is among youth ages 13 to 24. Every month 1,000 young people are infected with HIV and over 76,400 young people are currently living with HIV across the country. While there has been much talk about an AIDS-Free Generation, we know that is not possible without our nation’s youth. Young people and their allies are determined to end this epidemic once and for all and this day is a way to acknowledge the great work young people are already engaging in to do so.

National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day will be celebrated all across the country. There will be events hosted by various organizations and individuals in high schools, colleges, churches, community centers and more! There also will be opportunities for online participation.

To find out more about the National Youth HIV & AIDS Awarness Day, check out amplifyyourvoice.org

Posted in Education, In the News | Leave a Comment »

CDC expands Let’s Stop HIV Together campaign™, launches Spanish version

Posted by administrator on April 4, 2013

From AIDS.gov…

spanish campaignThis month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded the national HIV awareness and anti-stigma campaign, Let’s Stop HIV Together™, including the launch of a Spanish-language version of the campaign, Detengamos Juntos el VIH™. The campaign now includes new participants, more materials in both Spanish and English, and HIV awareness and testing information in Spanish through the new website. Campaign materials are available on the CDC’s Act Against AIDS website. New English materials available on the campaign website include:

  • PSA for TV featuring Jamar Rogers from NBC’s The Voice
  • 4 personal video stories
  • 15 campaign posters
  • Brochure

New Spanish materials on the Spanish-language version of the Act Against AIDS website include:

  • Public Service Announcements (PSAs) for radio and TV
  • 3 personal video stories
  • 12 campaign posters
  • Brochure and palm card

Posted in Consumer Information, In the News, Media | Leave a Comment »

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