The Internet is a popular method for men who have sex with men (MSM) to socialise and meet sexual partners. The rapid growth of the Internet as a space for communication, particularly on-line chat rooms and networks, demonstrates new ways in which personal or community links can occur and MSM can interact, providing new opportunities for health promotion and outreach to occur. The NetReach Project was an innovative initiative that offered sexual health information to gay and other MSM in Internet chat rooms.
The project was initiated due to the increasing role of the Internet in the sexual lives of MSM, and was a collaboration of AIDS organisations across Australia. In essence - peer volunteers or staff entered online chat rooms in a similar way that volunteers outreached at social, community and sexual venues. The program was implemented in a way that aimed to respect and support the users of this virtual environment and the online community they had created. NetReach drew on the combined experience of all the project partners to adapt current peer based outreach, training and supervision frameworks in gay men\'s health promotion to an online outreach setting in a way that was effective and supported by the community they were targeting. This presentation will provide an overview of the project\'s development, implementation and outcomes to date. Recommendations to be presented include : · Public health planners must be aware that the online environment is a constantly changing one and within as little as six months, significant changes can arise that may require re-thinking of interventions. · To stay abreast of trends and technologies and to be able to move with the target group, interventions must be firmly connected to the communities they are outreaching, and should use an ongoing reflexive approach in their methods and assumptions.
more about this speaker
