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How Can We Improve Online HIV and STD Prevention for Men Who Have Sex with Men? Perspectives of Hook-Up Website Owners, Website Users, and HIV/STD Directors

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Abstract

Internet-based interventions have potential to reduce HIV and STD transmission among men who meet male sexual partners online. From November 2009 to May 2010 we surveyed dating and hook-up website users (n = 3,050), website owners (n = 18), and health department HIV/STD directors (n = 81) to identify structural and behavioral prevention interventions that could be implemented online and which a majority of website users were willing to use, owners were willing to implement, and HIV/STD directors perceived to be effective. A majority of each of the three stakeholder groups agreed on the following: (1) automated HIV/STD testing reminders, (2) local STD test site directories, (3) links to sex-positive safe sex videos, (4) access to sexual health experts, (5) profile options to include safer sex preference, (6) chat rooms for specific sexual interests, (7) filtering partners by their profile information, and (8) anonymous e-card partner notification for STD exposure. Findings help build consensus about how to prioritize resources for implementing online HIV and STD prevention interventions and highlight differences between stakeholders to guide future discussion about how to advance prevention efforts.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of the participants of this study: the thousands of website users whose feedback will help assure us that whatever strategies are adopted will be well-accepted by the community; HIV and STD program directors, who took time to assess what would have the biggest impact on health; and the website owners and managers who have taken time from their work to help us understand how best to leverage the internet’s many resources to promote health for us all. Additionally, we would like to thank Dana Cropper-Williams, Kelly Mayor, Dave Kern, Julie Scofield, Ed Halteman, Stephan Adelson, Matthew Amsden, Coco Auerswald, Kyle Bernstein, Sheana Bull, Mary Ann Chiasson, Kevin Cranston, Alberto Curotto, Beau Gratzer, Paul Harterink, Sabina Hirshfield, Shana Krochmal, Deb Levine, Spencer Lieb, Julia Marcus, Laura Nixon, Jeffrey O’Malley, Jackson Peyton, John Peterson, Jim Pickett, Frank Strona, Jo Ellen Stryker, Patrick Sullivan, Adam Vaughn, Edward White, Ron Stall, Bill Woods, Terry Dyer, Andy Connors, Kyriell Noon, Jason Riggs, Jorge Vieto, Michael Hyde, Greg Ford, Heidi Bauer, Gail Bolan, Jessica Frasure-Williams, Alice Gandelman, Tom Gray, Holly Howard, Greg Mehlhaff, Emily Quinn, Daniella Matthews-Trigg, Michael Samuel, Michael Waddell, Eric Nielson, Kevin O’Malley, Tai Lockspeiser and Alan Le. For a complete version of this report, please visit http://www.stopaids.org/online. This study was supported by Grant #107503-45-RGBR from amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. Jonathan Volk’s contribution was supported by grant T32 MH19105 from the National Institutes of Mental Health of the US Public Health Service.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Dan Wohlfeiler

  2. STOP AIDS Project, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Jennifer Hecht & Tom Kennedy

  3. Division of Infectious Diseases, University of California at San Francisco, 25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA, 94201-6033, USA

    Jonathan Volk & Willi McFarland

  4. San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Jonathan Volk, H. Fisher Raymond & Willi McFarland

Authors
  1. Dan Wohlfeiler
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  2. Jennifer Hecht
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  3. Jonathan Volk
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  4. H. Fisher Raymond
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  5. Tom Kennedy
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  6. Willi McFarland
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Correspondence to Jonathan Volk.

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Wohlfeiler, D., Hecht, J., Volk, J. et al. How Can We Improve Online HIV and STD Prevention for Men Who Have Sex with Men? Perspectives of Hook-Up Website Owners, Website Users, and HIV/STD Directors. AIDS Behav 17, 3024–3033 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-012-0375-y

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