Price B, Cummings R, Hillier L; International Conference on AIDS (15th : 2004 : Bangkok, Thailand).

Int Conf AIDS. 2004 Jul 11-16; 15: abstract no. WePeC6113.

The Alfred, Melbourne, Australia

Background: This paper describes an innovative HIV education service occurring in Victorian gay internet chatrooms. The basis of the service was a research project which investigated responses to a HIV and gonorrhea education strategy in chatrooms, which monitored the men's responses, particularly in terms of appropriateness and perception of quality of information provided. The service was developed in response to rising HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) rates in men who have sex with men in Victoria coupled with an awareness that internet chatrooms are increasingly being used by men to communicate, talk about sex and arrange to meet for sex. The aim is to provide quality sexual health information and education to men in gay chatrooms in realtime. Method: During the research phase a sexual health nurse and health educator entered the chatrooms as 'health educators' for 2 hour time blocks, 5 times each week for 12 weeks and scrolled a simple sexual health message in the main chatroom inviting men to "private" us if they wanted to talk. Results: The message was scrolled 639 times and potentially seen by 25,685 men. Of the 165 men who chose to private us, 116 gave positive consent for us to download transcripts of our conversations and responses to set questions. Transcript analysis revealed a number of emergent themes such as; a low awareness of STI transmission and health and support services. The resulting service design was developed from outcomes of the study. It reaches men who are not connected to the gay community, or do not identify as being gay, or originate from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Conclusions: The education strategy research design, implementation and the quantitative and qualitative evaluation results are presented and their influence on the ongoing service model are discussed. The service reach and an overview of ongoing information requests will also be discussed and compared with the initial research.

Publication Types:

• Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

• Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
• Educational Status
• HIV Infections
• HIV Seropositivity
• Health Education
• Homosexuality, Male
• Humans
• Internet
• Interpersonal Relations
• Learning
• Male
• Teaching
• Thinking
• Victoria
• education

Other ID:

• GWAIDS0039816

UI: 102284032

From Meeting Abstracts