391P
ACCEPTABILITY, EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY OF A BATHHOUSE OUTREACH PROGRAM CALLED SEXPERT FOR ASIAN MEN WHO HAVE SEX WITH MEN (AMSM)
C Cabarios1, P Ho1, M Poon1, N Sutdhibhasilp1, G Browne2, R Sokolowski2, M Wong2
¹Asian Community AIDS Services (ACAS), Toronto; 2CLEAR Unit, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
Sexpert is designed to break the culture of silence seen as a barrier to negotiating safer sex in a bathhouse setting. This is a concurrent analytic survey of risk behavior in a bathhouse setting where users are recruited and trained to become Sexperts. A Sexpert is a person who promotes safer sex/risk behavior and outreach to others. Challenges of implementing a survey in a bathhouse setting, training and follow up of potential Sexperts and ability to motivate persons and their influence on others in changing risk behaviors will be discussed.
Characteristics of bathhouse users include: education, income, profession, depression, stigma, physical health, sexual and risk behaviors, STIs, HIV status, finding partners, self esteem, and their ability to negotiate safer sex practices.