Washington Blade - October 12, 2001
Laura Douglas-Brown

"Without designating specifically how, I think absolutely there is strong evidence showing that it is important to use the Internet as a way to reach individuals who may be engaging in high-risk behavior," said Ron Valdiserri, deputy director for the National Center for HIV, STD & TB Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

The CDC does not yet have a specific grant program for Internet education, but some agencies funded by the CDC are already conducting such outreach, Valdiserri said.

The federal agency is working to develop a better understanding of the best Internet outreach efforts, and this fall will convene "an alliance" of Internet service providers and others in the technology and telecommunications industries to examine the issue, he said.

CDC researchers will also release a study in the next two or three months that surveyed 5,000 Internet users on the prevention methods they think would be most "comfortable and acceptable," Valdiserri said.

Meanwhile, AIDS educators around the country say they have already started online outreach efforts even without receiving specific funding or direction from the CDC.

Nashville CARES, an AIDS service organization in Tennessee, began Internet outreach in 1997, said Joseph Interrante, the group's executive director.

Two of the agency's programs -- the Rainbow Brigade, which focuses on "the institutional GLBT community," and Brothers United, targeted at gay and bisexual men of color -- both work on the Internet.

But Interrante said Nashville CARES takes a more subtle approach to online outreach than that advocated by San Francisco's health department, which has asked AOL to post warnings about syphilis infections in its SFM4M chat room.

"One thing we don't do as much of is posting information in general discussion areas of chat rooms," Interrante said.

Instead, Nashville CARES staff might enter a chat room with a screen name that indicates that they are HIV workers, linked to a profile that says they represent an educational group that can provide safer sex information. People who are interested can send e-mails or instant messages with questions, he said.

National AIDS Education & Services for Minorities has conducted similar outreach, said Donato Clarke, director of health education and promotions for the Atlanta-based group.

"Using a screen name like æAIDS activist' or æAIDS 101,' we make it well known that this is an education person on the line," Clarke said. "If you are in the local Atlanta area and are highly sexually active, we leave a message so people can anonymously contact us to ask questions, sign up for workshops or access condoms or information.

"It tends to work," Clarke said.

A source at Whitman-Walker Clinic, the largest HIV/AIDS service provider in the D.C. area, said the Clinic has a program to provide outreach and education to the chat room demographic, but specific details about that program were not available at Blade deadline.

The D.C. government's HIV/AIDS Administration has a Web site, but currently is not engaged in any program that reaches out directly to people who frequent Internet chat rooms. However, the D.C. Department of Health's Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases just made $75,000 in research funds available for a individual or group who could design, implement, and evaluate an assessment of Internet chat room activity in the Washington area as a means for establishing sexual contacts (see page 10). Based on the findings of the assessment, outreach and education may be implemented in the D.C. area.

Both Interrante and Clarke said they would oppose efforts to close gay chat rooms in order to possibly prevent infections from liaisons arranged there.

"That doesn't seem like a way to respond to risk behavior," Interrante said. "What we know from 20 years of AIDS is that you don't actually eliminate or change people's behavior if you just close down a venue, you just push it into other areas."

Losing chat rooms would mean losing a valuable educational opportunity, Clarke agreed. Still, at least one gay activist argues that HIV prevention should stay off the Internet.

San Francisco activist Michael Petrelis, a frequent critic of AIDS agencies and public health officials, said he opposes any HIV outreach in chat rooms, just as he disagrees with such efforts in other areas gay men meet for sex.

"Gay men deserve privacy in cruising the Web," he said. "I believe gay men have been demonized long enough by HIV prevention workers. We should have our sexual spaces, like bath houses, back room bars and chat rooms."

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