Dr Peter Saxton It's been a busy year for a small team of university-based health researchers who focus almost entirely on health issues affecting gay and bisexual men in this country. The Auckland-based Gay Men's Sexual Health Research Group, centred on Dr Peter Saxton and researcher Adrian Ludlam, had their research results printed in fourteen articles in medical journals drawing the attention of health professionals and bureaucrats to issues such as modern HIV prevention strategies, problems with condom use adherence, the response to a Christchurch syphilis outbreak and other more general sexually transmitted infection matters. The team also prepared reports for the Ministry of Health on trends in the HIV epidemic and made a wide variety of submissions directly to the government on HIV treatment availability and funding, reviews to sexual health services in a number of regions and proposed law changes which would have an impact on gay and bi men's sexual health. In addition, they attended numerous conferences, several of which they themselves convened, and prepared a string of conference papers and presentations on topics such as GPs awareness of their gay and bi patients' sexual orientation, and awareness of HIV and sexual health issues amongst men who have sex with men, and HIV and HPV, the common Human Papillomavirus which can cause anal and penile cancer. The government has continued to resist extending an existing HPV vaccination programme for young women to include young gay men whose risk of contracting the virus us just as great. Two major projects completed this year were a feasibility study of HPV infection, awareness and vaccine acceptability in men and a behavioural surveillance report based on research conducted every two years to track changes in gay and bi men's sexual behaviour and attitudes. Dr Saxton says helping mark thirty years of HIV testing in New Zealand has given the team "pause to reflect and re-energise efforts to end HIV transmission."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 31st December 2015 - 9:42am