{"id":94160,"date":"2019-02-04T09:44:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T14:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=94160"},"modified":"2020-09-25T10:31:50","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T14:31:50","slug":"many-florida-men-unprotected-sex-despite-disclosing-hiv-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/many-florida-men-unprotected-sex-despite-disclosing-hiv-status\/","title":{"rendered":"Many Florida Men Having Unprotected Sex Despite Disclosing HIV Status"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite telling their partners they are HIV positive, many men with the virus in Florida are still having unprotected sex, according to a new study co-authored by a researcher at the University of Central Florida.<\/p>\n

Men who disclosed to partners they were HIV positive were three times more likely to have sex without a condom, the study reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not what you\u2019d expect,\u201d says Christa Cook, an associate professor in UCF\u2019s College of Nursing <\/a>and lead author of the study. \u201cYou\u2019d expect that, if people disclosed that they have HIV, there would be condom use because there would be a risk involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is especially important to study HIV disclosure in Florida because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the state has the second-highest rate of new HIV infection diagnoses in the nation.<\/p>\n

The study, which appeared recently in the journal PLOS One<\/a> and was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health, also found that 45 percent of the men surveyed either inconsistently disclosed or did not disclose their HIV status to their partners. They also found that counseling patients about preventing the spread of HIV did not seem to be related to disclosing HIV status to their partners.<\/p>\n

The findings suggest changes may be needed in how counseling of HIV patients is done.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a nurse, we are supposed to do prevention counseling with our clients and tell them ways that they can protect themselves, either through condom use or pre-exposure prophylaxis,\u201d Cook says. \u201cWe found out that prevention counseling was not a predictor. Prevention counseling wasn\u2019t associated with the rates of disclosure or condomless sex.\u201d<\/p>\n