3rd UAF Meeting (C8)

Group members met with Keith to report and discuss the first focus group that had taken place the week before.  Group members summarized all that was discussed in the focus group and how many were in attendance (see http://sjt1.blogspot.com/2014/10/community-meeting-7.html). Together, with Keith, potential focus areas were discussed including:

• Promoting awareness of the care that will be provided through UAF upon being tested positive through the free testing they offer. 
• Development of educational outreach program to General Practitioners. 
• Reference or "how to" sheet of info regarding how to appropriately and effectively speak with clients who are gay men. 
• workshop with self identified "gay friendly" doctors whom the UAF is in contact with. 
• Possible creation of a presentation that could be used in the medical field to educate how to more properly and emphatically speak with gay male clients.
• Community wide food-drive with publicity
• Targeting youth/college age men in community  through various means such as
• reaching out at non-alcoholic club scenes
• building a relationship with LGBT Resource Center on Campus as well as the LGBT Therapist Guild
• website transformation

Keith expressed his openness to further exploring any of these focus areas. He described to us his current method of advertising, and went into detail on a few existing and up-and-coming programs. In addition, he expressed the current rise in transmission rates for gay men who use injection drugs. We briefly discussed how we might best reach out to this group.

We discussed possible research topics with Keith, and decided that focusing on similar programs nationwide, particularly places comparable to Salt Lake City, would be beneficial in guiding our project. This research would look into what types of outreach and prevention have proved to be effective and what types have failed, and how this could be applicable to the Utah Aids Foundation's prevention efforts.