Gay Businesses - HIV Prevention
posted: 18/04/2011
Gay venues and businesses, like saunas, clubs, bars, profile and other gay websites, travel agencies and hotels, can either help reduce, or may increase the numbers of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) among gay, bi and other men who have sex with men (MSM).
There’s a new guide which sets out for businesses standards that will help not hinder HIV prevention called Everywhere. It comes from the University of Brighton.
Persuading gay businesses to help reduce the numbers of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) needs more than persuasion skills, it needs HIV prevention organisations to have ways of selling the advantages of HIV and STI prevention to these businesses.
Sex sells, so how can HIV prevention help these businesses sell themselves? The answers and training for HIV prevention organisations are provided in a training manual to go with the prevention standards manual for gay businesses.
One part of the training manual is called ‘Incentives for MSM business to be socially responsible’ and another is about working with hostile businesses. The training manual for helping HIV prevention organisations work with gay serving businesses to reduce HIV and other STI transmissions, is the Training Workbook on Social Mediation with Gay and MSM Businesses regarding HIV/STI prevention.
Both the standards for businesses and the the training manual are the work of the Europe-wide Everywhere Consortium for HIV prevention and their website has sections for gay men’s HIV and sexual health organisations, for businesses serving gay and bi men, and for gay men a section of the website lists venues and businesses which meet these HIV and sexual health prevention standards. So far few businesses are listed as meeting these standards - in the UK there are some in London and Brighton; in France some in Paris, in Spain some in Madrid, for example.
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