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Since the 1990s, researchers have used community-based participatory approaches to achieve outcomes relevant to local communities, to build collaborative and sustainable research infrastructures, and to address disparities in knowledge production. Notwithstanding these strengths, communities and researchers have questioned its success in addressing power imbalances inherent in collaborative research encounters. In this methodological paper, we describe a novel community-based program science approach to guide an interdisciplinary research project on HIV self-testing among men who have sex with men in three Kenyan counties. Drawing on ethnographic field notes, we detail how community researchers and their academic and programmatic partners collaborated through all phases of the research process, including research design and data collection. Importantly, community researchers also played an integral role in data analysis and dissemination, going well beyond the conventional role of 'community engagement' in global health research. We also present findings from qualitative interviews conducted by community researchers with their peers to inform the rollout of HIV self-testing kits in their respective county-contexts. Our approach highlights that engaging community directly in evidence production allows research findings – owned and generated by communities on their own behalf – to be fed more swiftly and effectively into community-led program delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Free or low-cost HIV testing, condoms, and lubricants are foundational HIV prevention strategies, yet are often inaccessible for men who have sex with men (MSM). In the global context of stigma and poor healthcare access, transgender (trans) MSM may face additional barriers to HIV prevention services. Drawing on data from a global survey of MSM, we aimed to describe perceived access to prevention services among trans MSM, examine associations between stigma and access, and compare access between trans MSM and cisgender (non-transgender) MSM. Methods: The 2014 Global Men's Health and Rights online survey was open to MSM (inclusive of trans MSM) from any country and available in seven languages. Baseline data (n =3857) were collected from July to October 2014. Among trans MSM, correlations were calculated between perceived service accessibility and anti-transgender violence, healthcare provider stigma, and discrimination. Using a nested matched-pair study design, trans MSM were matched 4:1 to cisgender MSM on age group, region, and HIV status, and conditional logistic regression models compared perceived access to prevention services by transgender status. Results: About 3.4% of respondents were trans men, of whom 69 were included in the present analysis. The average trans MSM participant was 26 to 35 years old (56.5%); lived in western Europe, North America, or Oceania (75.4%); and reported being HIVnegative (98.6%). HIV testing, condoms, and lubricants were accessible for 43.5, 53.6, and 26.1% of trans MSM, respectively. Ever having been arrested or convicted due to being trans and higher exposure to healthcare provider stigma in the past six months were associated with less access to some prevention services. Compared to matched cisgender controls, trans MSM reported significantly lower odds of perceived access to HIV testing (OR =0.57, 95% CI =0.33, 0.98) and condom-compatible lubricants (OR =0.54, 95% CI =0.30, 0.98). Conclusions: This first look at access to HIV prevention services for trans MSM globally found that most reported inadequate access to basic prevention services and that they were less likely than cisgender MSM to have access to HIV testing and lubricants. Results indicate the need to enhance access to basic HIV prevention services for trans MSM, including MSM- specific services. Keywords: HIV prevention; health services; transgender; men who have sex with men; HIV testing., Introduction In Europe and North America, a majority of transgender (trans) men report attraction to other men [1-3], and a substantial proportion report recent sexual contact with cisgender (non-trans) men. [...]

Despite the Internet's global importance as a sex-seeking venue for men who have sex with men (MSM) and other sexual and gender minorities, little is known about this topic in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, existing public health research offers limited insight into the sociocultural aspects of sexuality and how they articulate with patterns in online sex-seeking behavior. In 2015, we conducted survey and ethnographic research with 105 sexual and gender minorities in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Nearly half of survey respondents reported finding partners primarily online. Three quarters reported having found at least one partner online. Interviews with 24 of the survey participants revealed that a primary motivation for using online venues was that they allowed for the preservation and management of discretion and anonymity, permitting users to avoid discrimination and violence. While secondary to their strategies for managing such social risk, participants also reported using the profile features of online venues to filter out partners they perceived as presenting a risk to their sexual health. Though interview participants perceived online venues as providing a degree of protection against potential stigma and violence in offline contexts, survey data showed that over one quarter of participants had experienced extortion and/or blackmail by sexual partners they met online. By taking into account the sociocultural context of sexuality and sexual activity in Abidjan, these findings highlight the disjuncture between essentialist notions of MSM who use the Internet to find sex partners as a universal, at-risk group, and the complexity of sexual and gender minorities' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ashley Currier. 2012. Out in Africa: LGBT Organizing in Namibia and South Africa. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 255 pp. In the last two decades, international debates over the rights [...]

In the past decade, discourses about AIDS have taken a remarkable, and largely unquestioned, turn. Whereas mobilisations for treatment scale-up during the 2000s were premised on perceptions of an ‘epidemic out of control’, we have repeatedly been informed in more recent years that an end to AIDS is immanent. This new discourse and its resulting policies are motivated by post-recession financial pressures, a changing field of global institutions, and shifting health and development priorities. These shifts also reflect a biomedical triumphalism in HIV prevention and treatment, whereby shorter term, privatised, technological, and ‘cost-effective’ interventions are promoted over long-term support for antiretroviral treatment. To explore these changes, we utilise Treichler’s [(1987). How to have theory in an epidemic: Cultural chronicles of AIDS. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] view of AIDS as an ‘epidemic of signification’ to develop a review of ‘End of AIDS’ discourses in recent years. We use this review to investigate the political and philanthropic interests served by efforts to rebrand and re-signify the epidemic. We also hold up these discourses against the realities of treatment access in resource-poor countries, where ‘Ending AIDS’ has not heralded the end of an epidemic per se, but rather the end of external support for treatment programmes, highlighting new difficulties for sustaining treatment in this new era of the epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roughly 80 percent of people with mental illness live in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). This inductive analysis examines the ways power and the struggle for public authority affect mental health care in the LMIC of Tanzania. It investigates two mental health approaches: the biomedical approach, backed by state actors and donors and manifest in psychotropic medications, therapy, and/or hospitalization, and the spiritual approach, supported by many religious leaders and traditional healers and manifest in prayer, healing ceremonies, and traditional medications. The work demonstrates how various forms and levels of power undergirded these two approaches and influenced their abilities to improve the well-being of Tanzanians living with mental illness. Although the biomedical approach had more economic power and institutional power relative to the spiritual approach, these powers were insufficient to ensure effective patient care. The widespread presence of spiritual leaders and institutions led many to seek spiritual help, but the spiritual approach also was limited because of its proponents' narrow view of other-worldly power and their internal competition. Based on forty-six key informant interviews, the analysis elucidates how proponents of both approaches sought public authority in processes of competition and collaboration that emphasized individual solutions while downplaying social determinants that could affect mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the different ways in which gay men in Serbia perceive PrEP as a novel method of HIV prevention. In the article, I draw on data from my research on PrEP use among thirty gay men in Belgrade. The use of PrEP is still very low amongst gay communities in Serbia due to their rejection of PrEP and due to the stigma around PrEP use. In Serbia, the social significance of PrEP relates to HIV status disclosure on gay social/dating media. Paradoxically, on gay dating sites, the signifier “PrEP” blurs the line between HIV positive gay men – who have achieved undetectable HIV status through a potent ARV therapy – and those HIV negative gay men who use PrEP as a preventative tool against HIV transmission. In the article, I will argue that a new form of gay identity has emerged on gay dating apps in Serbia – “undetectable, on PrEP.” This new identity emerges from confusion in HIV risk assessment. The use of PrEP has been seen as a marker to denote someone’s HIV negative status and to protect them from HIV transmission. However, some gay men with an undetectable HIV status would like to be regarded as HIV negative even though they are not, and thus they use the signifier “on PrEP” to highlight their desire to claim an HIV negative status. PrEP has many symbolic valences: from HIV status disclosure to assumed promiscuity. As I will argue, while the health paradigm is of utmost importance for Serbian gay men, internalized stigma additionally drives the low uptake of PrEP amongst gay communities in Serbia, thus contributing to the confusion regarding PrEP use and the overall approach to HIV prevention. This article finds that those respondents who accept PrEP without stigma or confusion regarding their HIV status are also more willing and ready to recommend using PrEP to other gay men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this special section examine how people in various contexts of the Global South "construct the self" in online spaces. With examples from Chile, Senegal, and Trinidad, the papers show the wide range of discursive practices, encompassing the textual and the aesthetic, which individuals use to enact gendered and sexual selves online. By privileging gender and sexuality as central components of selfhood, we draw from the longstanding attention paid to gender and sexuality in linguistic studies of identification (see Bucholtz & Hall 2004). In placing this concept within digital worlds, we pay attention to the ways in which daily life is now lived and experienced online. Authors in this issue think critically about practices of self-formation and the performance of gender and sexuality that differ from those that have normalized in the Global North, considering both revolutionary possibility, and re-entrenchment of constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understandings of African lesbian sexualities have been affected by silence, repression, and uncertainty. The subject of lesbian experiences and sexualities in Africa constitutes an opportunity for feminist scholars to address the transnational politics of knowledge production about African lesbians' lives and the contours of lesbian art, activism, and relationships in African nations. This article contextualizes the state of research on African lesbian sexualities and introduces the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A list of reviewers for the issue is presented, which includes Abimbola, Seye; Barimah, Kofi; and Canavera, Mark.

The article discusses the relation between queer studies and African studies. Topics include the creation of the group Gays and Lesbians in African Studies (GLAS) in the organization African Studies Association (ASA), homophobic legislation and violence against LGBTI people in Africa, and the relation of intersectionality to queer African studies.