Pol McCann: Market Research Of Gay Mens Knowledge and Attitudes to Syphilis

Syphilis across Australia: finding out what gay men know about symptoms, transmissibility and treatment Pol Dominic McCann, Kathy Triffitt, Jack Bradley, Ian Down, Garrett Prestage

Aim: to investigate knowledge about syphilis and willingness to accept interventions Short timeframe, so working in with our existing research Projects: The PASH Project How we are collecting data

Interviews with key informants; pro-forma interviews with sexual health and ID specialists in three cities to get their professional responses on what could work: come back to them later Formation of a focus group schedule; recruitment through a variety of networks though recruitment has been hard: Syphilis is not a priority

Key informant interview with other service providers and people in the industry Small-group session today will form part of the data Link in to PASH: interviews, survey and a targeted survey

Key themes: high level of confusion about all facets, including what men are told by doctors Strong resistance to any interventions which require behaviour Modification - despite men describing difficult experiences with HIV and syphilis co-infection Increase in testing is acceptable, but many poz men are already testing frequently and see this conferring protection: neg men are seen as the biggest risk

Contact rate

Partner acquisition

Abstinence

Monogamy

Duration of infectiousness

Screening

Timely diagnosis

Effective treatment

Transmission probability per partnership

Frequency of sex and type of sex

Condoms, microbicides

Suppressive treatment

PEP

Pleasure prioritising vs. Public health To soon to tell as this is limited data from early groups, but it may be fanciful to rely on men being community-minded We are relying on assistance from people here to spread the word in order to get participants in both studies