Our programme of work
How we intervene to improve men's sexual health
Direct Contact
Direct contact work is the health promotion activity that gay and bisexual men encounter. It can be text-based and involve reading or writing (eg, posters, booklets, web sites) or it can be talk-based (such as group work, counselling or outreach). Reading and writing interventions are good at passing on simple information, raising awareness of an issue and encouraging men to reflect. Talking interventions are better at giving skills, meeting social needs and tackling interpersonal issues.
Reading and writing interventions can have few words, such as a press advert, as can items such as condom pack wrappers or banner ads on web sites, which support a campaign message. Magazines or web sites, however, can explore an issue in greater detail.
CHAPS’ support materials such as condom packs and give-aways (sweets, scratch cards, key rings, stickers, etc) can increase men’s engagement with a campaign and boost campaign recognition. Outreach workers report they make it easier for them to start conversations. Their usefulness is optimised if they carry health promotion messages.
Ideally a direct contact programme should include a mix of both reading/writing and talking interventions, both printed and online.
Direct contact work is delivered in a range of settings; the gay press (eg, adverts), in gay venues (eg, leaflets), online (eg, web sites or banner ads), within clinical services or community settings (eg, posters or counselling) or in public spaces (outdoor advertising or outreach in cruising areas).
Direct contact activity can have a broad target audience or, following particular needs identified by research, be aimed at discreet populations such as men with diagnosed HIV or younger men. Messages and designs can be tailored to appeal to them and distribution can target them. Whoever the target audience, CHAPS tries to make its direct contact material understandable to men with low levels of education as research shows they have greater health needs and are more likely to become HIV positive. CHAPS interventions are often independently pre-tested with focus groups of the target audience and people who work in the HIV and sexual health sector to ensure accceptability and understanding.
Sector Development
This part of the CHAPS programme focuses on developing and building the skills and capacity of people who work in the gay men’s HIV prevention and health promotion sector.
This involves taking forward a number of important interventions from organising the annual CHAPS conference, to producing briefing sheets designed to support our collaborative framework, Making it Count. Sector Development also focuses on delivering and co-ordinating a suite of training interventions aiming to increase the capacity and skills of gay men’s health promoters.
E&D
Since its beginnings, CHAPS has had evaluation and devleopment at its core. The CHAPS E&D partners are currently Sigma Research, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Cambridge Health Evaluation Consultancy.
There are 5 broad areas within this part of the programme, with each area commissioned to inform the future development of CHAPS interventions and to build an evidence base of MSM’s health promotion needs. These 5 areas are:
- Generating needs data
- Evaluating interventions
- Basic research
- Programme Planning
- Knowledge transfer
Leadership and strategy
An important part of the CHAPS programme is the establishment and implementation of strategy and leadership for gay men’s HIV prevention work. There are two aspects to this.
First, ensuring that the national strategy for England, Making it Count, remains relevant and up to date and that it is properly implemented at both local and national level, and second, developing strategic leadership within England and the international gay men’s HIV prevention field.
In terms of leadership within England and further afield, the partnership seeks to influence English NHS and Local Government commissioners when commissioning and planning gay men’s HIV prevention programmes. In addition, our leadership strategy also focuses on working with clinical service providers.
Sub-population work
Within any given population or community their will be sub-populations with different sets of needs. This is true within the gay/MSM community in England. Research continues to point to a number of sub-populations with specific HIV prevention needs. This may make men within these groups more vulnerable to HIV infection.
It is the role of CHAPS to try to "overserve" these sub-populations through all of our interventions. This can mean that we develop and promote HIV information programmes for these specific sub-populations, or we can try to tailor our more generic messages to have a greater impact on men withinsub-populations.
CHAPS has historically focused on 5 sub-populations, namely men living with HIV, Men who use class A drugs, Black and Minority Ethnic men (BME), younger gay men and men with lower levels of educational qualifications.
Some of our ongoing targeted work includes:
U+ a health and lifestyle magazine for men living with HIV. You can see our back editions of U+ here
Drugfucked our series of information booklets and supporting web presence focusing on street drugs and sex. You can find out more about this intervention here
There's also www.ygm.org.uk developed to support younger gay men to answer their questions regarding coming out, relationships, sex and sexual health.
CHAPS is now building on past work with these sub-populations of gay men by delivering a series of “symposia” to allow experts in the field to agree recommendations on the best way to reduce HIV prevention needs for men in these sub-populations.
Future work to support men in these sub-populations will be informed by the outcomes of these symposia and further liaison with the key stakeholders and experts in these fields. Three symposia (Men who use class A drugs, Positive prevention for men living with HIV, and supporting Black and Minority Ethnic men who have sex with men (BME MSM)) have been planned for this year.
You can read the reports detailing the outcome of these events here.