Two posters highlighting innovation by OUT’s Engage Men’s Health project in the HIV field have been accepted for exhibition at the 2021 International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA), being hosted in Durban.
The use of posters to present a summary of research findings has become an increasingly prominent platform at many scientific and medical conferences.
The first poster that was accepted reveals how Engage Men’s Health (EMH) dramatically improved the uptake and continued use of PrEP among high-risk clients through its “Ready, Able, and Willing” strategy. This is important because many clients who start PrEP often use this powerful HIV prevention method inconsistently or then stop using it entirely.
The second poster looks at the implementation of new referral strategies by EMH, moving away from mapping “hotspots” to working with high-risk MSM networks through champions. This led to a marked improvement in identifying MSM (men who have sex with men) who are HIV positive.
These innovations have allowed EMH to reach and assist more members of the MSM community who are either at high risk of HIV or are living with the virus but don’t know they are positive.
OUT and EMH thanks and congratulates our staff and the authors of the posters on their leading-edge work, all playing their part in helping to bring the HIV epidemic under control and ultimately to an end.
The posters will be presented at ICASA 2021, which takes place online and in Durban, South Africa, from 6 to 11 December. The theme for this year’s prestigious conference is “Africa’s AIDS response: The race to 2030 – Evidence. Scale Up. Accelerate.”
Engage Men’s Health is a project of OUT LGBT Well-being and is funded by USAID through PEPFAR.
*Photo of Durban skyline: Wikipedia / PhilippN / Creative Commons License