A lack of appropriate sexual health education is putting some of Queensland’s most vulnerable and marginalised youth at risk of contracting HIV, experts say.
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As more and more young people reject the traditional notions of sex and gender, health programs are struggling to keep accessible and appropriate information suitable to all backgrounds and genders.
In Brisbane, a new social media campaign is being developed to help young LGBTI+ residents better understand the risks of HIV, and how to protect themselves and their partners from the disease.
Youth outreach service Open Doors, based in Fortitude Valley, is collaborating with researchers from the University of Queensland’s School of Public Health to develop the campaign.
Funded by a ViiV Healthcare Positive Action Community Grant, the campaign will work to expand the knowledge young people have around HIV, taking stigma and fear away from the disease.
Open Door director Chris Pickard said staff at the organisation, which welcomes more than a thousand youth through its doors each year, had noticed a deep gulf in the knowledge young gender-variant people had about sexual health.
“Because there’s a lack of adequate sexual education for young people in schools, they really don’t know as much as they should by the time they come to be sexually active,” he said.
“Because there is … very few, if not zero, specialised services for young people to go and seek support around sexual health testing, it was discussed among the group that there was a significant need to make sure we were providing these young people with the support and education that they needed and deserved.”
In Queensland, there were 192 new diagnoses of HIV in 2016, nearly 90 per cent of whom were male.
Almost 30 per cent of the new cases were in the 20-29 year age bracket, and there was an increase in diagnoses among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
School of Public Health researcher Dr Lisa Fitzgerald, who is leading the research into the social marketing campaign for Open Doors, said young people accessing the service would help shape it.
Mr Pickard said for gender-diverse youth it could be particularly intimidating visiting their family doctor or seeking health care, for fear of stigma, vilification or being outed to family and friends.
In 2016, the largest number of newly diagnosed HIV cases in Queensland were from Brisbane's Metro North health region - 57 cases - followed by Metro South with 37 cases.
The Gold Coast followed close behind with 31 cases.
To resolve the fear of stigma and exposure, Open Doors is also launching a monthly rapid HIV testing service at their premises in Fortitude Valley, giving those aged between 16 and 24 the chance to get tested out of the public eye and without judgement.
“The rates of … STIs are growing in Australia generally and [there’s a] need for us to be looking at how we can enable young people to access sexual health testing more effectively,” Dr Fitzgerald said.
The school has previously worked with Open Doors on similar programs to improve sexual health knowledge in young people, and those programs had made clear the lack of sexual health literacy.
She said the social marketing campaign would be developed over the next 12 to 18 months to create an accessible, welcoming program with clear information on HIV.
