A new study has found that it is possible to increase HIV testing rates for gay and transgender people by promoting testing on social media sites that are used by members of these communities to meet friends and sex partners.
Researchers in the U.S. conducted a trial among two online communities and targeted geographic locations 200 to 300 miles apart to prevent user overlap since some of these sites, such as Craigslist, BlackGayChat, Adam4Adam and Gay.com, are designed to have users meet up in person. The team posted on another two forums without the intervention for comparison.
Health educators created public profiles on each site that were accessible to anyone and allowed the educators to talk to users about the importance of HIV testing, their availability to help and where users could go for testing services.
Users were also offered $10 to complete an assessment, in which they would provide information on drug and alcohol use, age, race, sexual orientation, HIV status and testing history over the past year. While more than 1,000 users completed the assessment, most declined the $10 compensation.
The results showed that the average user was 40 years old, and almost all of them reported having sex with at least one man over the past year while one-third reported having sex with at least one woman in the same timeframe. Almost 35 percent said at the beginning of the year that they were tested for HIV over the previous 12 months, and 64 percent of those in the intervention communities said that they were tested in the previous year, while 40 percent in the control groups said they were tested in the same timeframe.
Scott D. Rhodes, lead study author from Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., said in an email that his team wasn't sure if men and transgender people would accept HIV testing that would be provided on social media sites that some of them use, adding that while most people are assumed to know about HIV and how to get tested, that isn't true.
"HIV testing is important for anyone who is sexually active, and the CDC recommends that all individuals get tested at least once in their lifetimes and those with risk factors get tested more frequently," he said.
Rhodes added that the need for only one health professional and access to the Internet made it easy to conduct the intervention, further suggesting that health departments, clinics and other organizations that are trying to prevent HIV can use social media to widely implement the intervention.
Dr. Lisa Hightow-Weidman of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, who was not part of the study, noted that the users in the intervention were mostly older and white, adding that experts should design them to be available to younger members of these communities, especially those of color since they are the most impacted by HIV in the U.S.
The study was published in the March 14 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
