Working with partners in British Columbia, the OHTN’s Applied Epidemiology Unit has released a new report on health literacy, sexual health and gay men.
Download the full report. (7.7 mb)
Health literacy is having the skills to find, understand, evaluate and talk about health information with others. Health literacy is important for good health at all ages – and this includes for sexual health. In Canada, gay men were one of the first groups affected by HIV. Over time, gay men have developed ways to prevent HIV based on new information about the virus and how it spreads. Today, because there is so much more information about HIV, having good health literacy skills has become even more important for gay men.
This report, which builds on a summit held in B.C. in 2014, presents a framework for how to think about sexual health literacy for gay men. It also identifies key research questions related to each element of the framework. We hope this framework can be helpful in planning future research studies, as well as for thinking about tools or programs to improve sexual health literacy for gay men.