Understanding Prevention for HIV Positive Gay Men: Innovative Approaches in Addressing the AIDS Epidemic

This innovative collection offers a wide-ranging palette of psychological, public health, and sociopolitical approaches toward addressing the multi-level prevention needs of gay men living with HIV and AIDS. This book advances our understanding of comprehensive health care, risk and preventive behaviors, sources of mental distress and resilience, treatment adherence, and the experiences of gay men’s communities such as communities of color, youth, faith communities, and the house ball community. Interventions span biomedical, behavioral, structural, and technological approaches toward critical goals, including bolstering the immune system, promoting safer sexual practices, reducing HIV-related stigma and discrimination, and eliminating barriers to care. The emphasis throughout these diverse chapters is on evidence-based, client-centered practice, coordination of care, and inclusive, culturally responsive services.

Included in the coverage:

• Comprehensive primary health care for HIV positive gay men
• From pathology to resiliency: understanding the mental health of HIV positive gay men
• Emerging and innovative prevention strategies for HIV positive gay men
• Understanding the developmental and psychosocial needs of HIV positive gay adolescent males
• Social networks of HIV positive gay men: their role and importance in HIV prevention
• HIV positive gay men, health care, legal rights, and policy issues

Understanding Prevention for HIV Positive Gay Men will interest academics, researchers, prevention experts, practitioners, and policymakers in public health. It will also be important to research organizations, nonprofit organizations, and clinical agencies, as well as graduate programs related to public health, consultation, and advocacy.

Leo Wilton, PhD, MPH, is Professor in the Department of Human Development in the College of Community and Public Affairs (CCPA) at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is affiliated with the Department of Africana Studies and Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies (LACAS) program at Binghamton University. Dr. Wilton is a Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg in Johannesburg, South Africa. His primary research interests include health disparities and inequities (primary and secondary HIV prevention); community based research and evaluation; and Black psychological development and mental health. Dr. Wilton’s scholarly research on the AIDS epidemic focuses on the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality, as situated in macro- and –micro-level inequalities in Black communities, both nationally and internationally. The overall objective of his scholarly research program focuses on the impact of socio-structural/-cultural factors that influence sexual/drug-risk and protective behavior and mental health for Black men who have sex with men (MSM). A key emphasis is placed on understanding how these domains influence people’s development and well-being within African and African Diasporic communities for same-gender practicing men, with specific implications for addressing social justice and human rights. His research examines socio-structural/-cultural factors that provide the basis for the development of culturally-congruent HIV prevention interventions for Black MSM.

Dr. Wilton was appointed to the NIH Director’s Council of Public Representatives (COPR) for a four-year term. He was invited to the White House by the Office of National AIDS Policy as part of a select group of nationally recognized experts to participate in a research meeting that addressed the state of the AIDS epidemic among Black men in the US. He was a Regional Trainer for the HOPE program with the American Psychological Association. He is a lifetime member of the Association of Black Psychologists and Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD). He is a founding member and immediate past Chair of the Board of Directors of the Black Gay Research Group (BGRG), an international organization of Black gay men engaged in interdisciplinary and intersectional research in the fields of public health, psychology, African Diaspora studies, gender studies, and sexuality studies.

Dr. Wilton is a recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in the State University of New York (SUNY) and the Distinguished Contributions to Ethnic Minority Issues Award by Division 44 of the American Psychological Association. He completed a PhD degree in counseling psychology at New York University, MPH degree at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, predoctoral clinical psychology fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, postdoctoral research fellowship in HIV behavioral research and evaluation at New York University, and a postdoctoral summer fellowship in the Empirical Summer Program in Multi-Ethnic Research at the University of Michigan. He was a Visiting Professor at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.