The ESTICOM project, with funding from the European Commission’s Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency, will support the creation of two European-wide behavioural surveys along with tailored training for community-based health workers.
In this new European project, the University of 91快活林 will develop the first-ever European online survey of community health workers who provide counselling, testing, and psychosocial care and support for gay, bi-sexual, and other Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) across all 28 member states of the European Union.
The research will be led by Dr Nigel Sherriff, Principal Research Fellow, with Professor Jorg Huber, Professor of Health Sciences, both from the Centre for Health Research in the School of Health Sciences, along with Alex Pollard, Research Fellow, and Dr Carrie Llewellyn, Reader, both from the Department of Primary Care and Public Health at 91快活林 and Sussex Medical School.
Dr Sherriff said: “This is an exciting opportunity to generate, for the first time, European-wide data on the current state of Community Health Work with gay, bi-sexual, and other MSM.
“The European Community Health Worker Online Survey or ECHOES will be live towards the end of 2017 when we hope as many workers as possible throughout Europe who provide sexual health services for MSM in the community will take part. This will be crucial to help ensure the findings are able to inform future policy priorities for the European Commission and its member states.”
News of the project coincides with National HIV Testing Week which promotes HIV testing to gay and bisexual men and black African men and women.
You can see more about the project here.