Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Gay, bisexual, trans, and other men who have sex with men (GBTMSM) continue to be greatly affected by HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) compared to heterosexual persons. HIV prevention strategies, including testing and medical treatments, have changed enormously in the past decade. These changes include the greater availability of point-of-care testing, and recent increases in the GBTMSM using Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). Further, information that is relevant to GBTMSM living outside of larger metropolitan cities is often not available, creating problems when designing health prevention and promotion campaigns that are not based on lived experiences of those being targeted. This represents one of the few research projects to obtain large amounts of information from GBTMSM that reflects life outside of a large metropolitan area and that will have direct impact on local programs and services, and potentially beyond. The OutLook Study is a community-based research (CBR) project started by local communities and allies that gathered survey information from local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in the Region of Waterloo, Ontario. The survey asked questions about social support, and community connections, and asked more detailed questions to GBTMSM about sexual behaviours, access to sexual health services, and opinions and knowledge about issues that are important and relevant to GBTMSM (HIV disclosure, for example). OutLook collected surveys from 269 GBTMSM who live, work, or go to school in the Region. Analyses explored HIV & STI testing practices; sexual behaviour; access to community sexual health and HIV services; HIV criminalization and disclosure knowledge; and use of and access to PrEP in local GBTMSM. Factors related to each outcome are presented.