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ABSTRACT
In 2004, a team of registered nurses from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control's Outreach/Street Nursing Program developed an online sexual health information and referral service on a Canadian website designed for men who have sex with men and are seeking social or sexual interaction. Over the next 18 months, two outreach nurses delivered care via the website for a total of six hours per week. The authors describe the process of planning, implementing and evaluating this service. The results of this pilot project indicated that providing online STI/HIV education is an effective tool for reaching an at-risk population.
KEYWORDS
gay and bisexual men, Internet outreach, online nursing, sexual health, STI/HIV information and referral services, STI/HIV prevention education
According to Kim, Kent, McFarland and Klausner (2001), men who have sex with men (MSM) are more likely to meet partners through the Internet than their heterosexual counterparts. A Sex Now survey of close to 3,000 MSM, conducted at gay pride events throughout British Columbia, reported that over one-third had met a sexual partner on the Internet in the previous year (Trussler, Marchand, & Barker, 2004).
MSM who want to connect with other MSM online with the intention of meeting for sex are also reported to have more sexual partners, a higher rate of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), more anal sex, and sex with more HIV-positive partners than people who did not seek sex online (McFarlane, Bull, & Rietmeijer, 2000). Further, it has been estimated that one in seven MSM living in Vancouver and one in 11 MSM living in other areas of B.C. are HIV positive (Trussler, Marchand, & Barker, 2003). The results of a Sex Now survey of 1,500 participants conducted in summer 2007 indicated the proportion of MSM in B.C. who had found their most recent sexual partner online increased from 17 per cent in 2002 to 58 per cent in 2007 (Trussler, 2008).
Unfortunately, MSM are less likely to seek out mainstream health-care services because of fear of discrimination and homophobic responses from health-care providers (Peterkin & Risdon, 2003). Literature supports the benefits of STI/HIV prevention education on the Internet (Bull, McFarlane, & King, 2001; Klausner, Levine, & Kent, 2004) as it offers a medium by which users can interact...