The Vanguard Project has a staff change to announce and some news to report. The big news is that Dr. Robert Hogg has been named the new Principal Investigator for the study, as Dr. Steffanie Strathdee will soon be leaving Vancouver to work in the united States. Dr. Strathdee has been the director of the project since its inception in 1994 and Dr. Martin Schechter has been the Principal Investigator.
The good news is that the first paper based on findings form the Vanguard Project has been accepted for publication. Entitled "Determinants of sexual risk-taking among young HIV-negative gay and bisexual men" by Dr. Steffanie Strathdee et al, the article is currently in press with the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Human Retroviruses, and will be published this summer.
The paper reports that questionnaires completed by Vanguard participants at baseline were analyzed to identify determinants of sexual risk-taking. Risk-takers were found to have less education, a higher depression score, less social support, and were more likely to report non-consensual sex and recreational drug use. Independent predictors of sexual risk-taking were low education, nitrite use, low social support and non-consensual sex experienced as a youth or adult.
The Vanguard Project is an ongoing study of HIV rates and risk factors in young gay and bisexual men in the Lower Mainland. Launched in 1995, the project is a follow-up to the Vancouver Lymphadenopathy-AIDS Study (VLAS), and is funded by a grant from the National Health Research & Development Program, Health Canada.
Other findings of the Vanguard Project were presented at the recent annual conference of the Canadian Association for HIV Research in Quebec City, and several poster presentations will be displayed at the upcoming XII International Conference on AIDS in Geneva, Switzerland. The full text of these and other presentations can be found on our web site at:
http://cfenet.ubc.ca/vanguard/project.html
Participants have been continuously recruited into the study since its launch in May 1995. As illustrated in the accompanying bar graph, Vanguard participants have been recruited in a variety of ways, the most successful of which has been direct outreach at bars and community events. So far, almost 800 participants have been recruited.
In addition to HIV testing and completing questionnaires on an annual basis, Vanguard participants are now being asked to provide blood samples for storage. So far, nearly 400 participants have provided a blood sample, which will be stored for future immunological testing.
For more information, contact project coordinator Steve Martindale
at (604) 687-2469 or stevem@hivnet.ubc.ca.
For more information, contact:
Bonnie Devlin
Vanguard Project Coordinator
608 - 1081 Burrard Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6Z 1Y6
Tel: (604)806-8306
Fax: (604)806-9044