Staying Negative aims to emotionally engage, inspire and facilitate imagination in sexual health practices. The campaign profiles the real life stories of gay, bisexual and trans men who have sex with men (MSM). Men talk about all aspects of their life from coming out, relationships, sexuality and a broad range of other topics. While HIV and safe sex is an important part of all stories, it is not the exclusive focus.
Prior HIV prevention campaigns have traditionally focused on providing gay men with information that will encourage them to adopt safe sex behaviours. In reality, safe sex practices are influenced by a whole range of environmental and cultural factors. The campaign also provides an opportunity for HIV positive men to talk about their lives and discuss how their strategies to staying HIV negative were not successful. We understand that there is more than one way practice safe sex and adopt healthcare seeking behaviours, so let's be creative about it!
There are no real criteria for participants other than that they are MSM and happy to have their stories appear as part of the campaign. In addition to the personal stories, the website provides information on HIV/AIDS, sexual health, relationships and broad of the other relevant topics including domestic violence, drugs and alcohol and depression.
Pre-exposure Prophylaxis, known as PrEP for short, is the use of anti-retroviral medication over a sustained period of time by HIV negative guys to help reduce HIV transmissions. For PrEP to be effective, it is very important that it is adhered to properly and used as part of an HIV prevention strategy alongside other risk reduction strategies such as the use of condoms and lube.
When using PrEP, an HIV negative guy needs to take the medication for at least 7 days before his first sexual encounter and continually so every day for PrEP to be effective.
It is important to remember that PrEP does not protect against STIs or pregnancy so other strategies must be in place too.
Check out this video below on 10 things you need to know about PrEP: