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Studying the health of sexual and gender minorities has become a new priority for the federal government. The study, named Project Q2, is the longest running longitudinal study of LGBT youth ever conducted.
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The men are a subset of participants in Mustanski’s ongoing longitudinal study on the sexual and mental health of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth. The Northwestern study looked at the behaviors of a diverse population of 122 young men (16 to 20 years old when the study began) over two years in Chicago and the suburbs. A new shift to focus research on committed gay couples is partly a result of the burgeoning same-sex marriage movement, Mustanski said. Being in a committed relationship more strongly influenced whether a gay man had unprotected sex than using drugs with a partner, the latter doubling the risk. The videos will be available on The study findings dovetail with recent Centers for Disease Control data showing the majority of HIV transmissions occur in serious relationships.
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To help reach this group, Mustanski plans to produce two videos for gay youth this summer that discuss having healthy relationships and HIV prevention. We should be focusing on serious relationships.” “This is one population that has really been left behind. “We need to do greater outreach to young male couples,” said Mustanski, who conducted the research when he was at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The new Northwestern research shows HIV prevention programs should be directed toward serious relationships rather than the current focus on individuals who hook up in casual relationships. “Instead, both people in a serious, monogamous couple relationship should go and receive at least two HIV tests before deciding to stop using condoms.” “It isn’t enough to ask your partner his HIV status,” Mustanski said. “Men who believe a relationship is serious mistakenly think they don’t need to protect themselves.”Ībout 80 percent of gay young men who are HIV positive don’t know it, because they aren’t being tested frequently enough, he noted. “Being in a serious relationship provides a number of mental and physical health benefits, but it also increases behaviors that put you at risk for HIV transmission,” said Brian Mustanski, associate professor in medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of a paper on the research, published online in the journal Health Psychology. The findings provide a new direction for prevention efforts in this population who account for nearly 70 percent of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in adolescents and young adults in the United States and who also have the highest increase in new infections. CHICAGO - Gay young men in serious relationships are six times more likely to have unprotected sex than those who hook up with casual partners, according to new Northwestern Medicine research.