News Finding: "One takeaway is that HIV-negative black MSM want to be better attended to by public health HIV prevention, beyond counseling and testing," said Jagadisa-devasri Dacus, Ph.D., LMSW, who conducted the study and is the lead author of the article.
Paper Finding: In combination, some of these decisions can be viewed adaptive risk reduction behaviors that facilitate avoidance of HIV, and some may have applicability to risk reduction interventions.
News Context: Consequently, participants did not mention PrEP as part of their strategy to prevent HIV acquisition, as it was not publicly available to them at the time of the study. "One takeaway is that HIV-negative black MSM want to be better attended to by public health HIV prevention, beyond counseling and testing," said Jagadisa-devasri Dacus, Ph.D., LMSW, who conducted the study and is the lead author of the article. "The scarcity of programs and interventions to support their maintained HIV negativity needs to be addressed as a primary prevention effort."
Paper Context: One of the key messages from this study is that among men at high-risk for HIV who remain HIV negative (i.e., ''positive deviants''), there may be successive decisionmaking across a timeline to a sexual event that reduces risk, even if a condom is not used. In combination, some of these decisions can be viewed adaptive risk reduction behaviors that facilitate avoidance of HIV, and some may have applicability to risk reduction interventions. Findings suggest that men who do not contract HIV may be engaging in risk reduction strategies before and during sexual events that could lead to increased condom use, avoidance or delay of a risky sexual event (such as when the men discussed not getting so high or drunk they might end up in a situation in which they do not use a condom), or reduction of their risk pool (i.e., reducing the number or type of partners likely to have HIV through screening and pre-selection).