With results from The Henne Group’s (THG) research, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University Dr. Tara McKay presented results from three different studies at the International AIDS Conference in Montreal this past July. The studies highlighted The Henne Group’s various research partnerships, our work in public health, and our LGBTQIA+ focused research to an international audience. The first study highlighted THG’s partnership and research with ViiV Healthcare, Q-Catalytics, and the Prevention Access Campaign on a social media advertising campaign to raise awareness for the HIV prevention campaign “Undetectable=Untransmittable” (U=U). The study’s goal was to measure if and how the U=U social media campaign and the simultaneous peer-to-peer engagement strategy could raise awareness among the men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) population in Mississippi and Alabama.The findings reported that men who had been exposed to the campaign were more aware of the U=U message than those who weren’t exposed and that men who had healthcare providers were more likely to be aware and believe the U=U message than those who did not have health providers. In the presentation, Dr. McKay further showed that an indirect effect of the U=U awareness campaign helped men make new connections to a healthcare provider.  

The second study reported on middle-aged and older gay and bisexual men's awareness of the U=U message in six southern states and highlighted THG’s partnerships with Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, and the Tennessee Center for AIDS Research. The study reported that middle-aged and older gay and bisexual men are three times more likely to have heard of the U=U message if they had access to an LGBTQIA+ affirming healthcare provider rather than those who did not. This data also shows that increasing access to LGBTQIA+ affirming health care providers within this community may reduce HIV stigma and increase HIV awareness. Dr. McKay also explained that these findings could provide the data that healthcare providers need to become more aware of the LGBTQIA+ community’s healthcare needs. “We can help clinicians be more inclusive, by, for example, updating intake forms to include peoples’ gender identity rather than biological sex and making sure that spouses, partners, and caregivers in our community feel welcome in health care spaces,” Dr. McKay said. This study has been published and is available in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 

The third study reported on how the LGBTQIA+ community’s trust in public health can be affected in states that have HIV-criminalization laws and highlighted our partnership with The Sero Project, the HIV Justice Network, and other contributors. The study reported that 70 percent of people living with HIV said that HIV criminalization laws caused them to trust their public health practitioners less. This is problematic for public health in general when it comes to promoting other public health measures, such as COVID vaccines. In fact, the study reported that COVID vaccine rates were lower among adults living with HIV in states where HIV criminalization laws were in place. “When someone gets a vaccine, they are saying, ‘I trust the people delivering it.’ HIV criminalization laws lower that trust among people living with HIV. When it came time to get the COVID-19 vaccine, fewer people living with HIV did so in states that criminalize HIV transmission compared with people living with HIV in states that don’t have HIV-specific criminalization laws,” Dr. McKay said.