Informing the Trending Sexual Health initiative: Results from the 2017 Warming Up survey.

Abstract

The findings presented in this report contribute to a betterunderstanding of the sexual health-related attitudes, practices and needs of the population of young people targeted by the Trending Sexual Health initiative. In line with the results ofthe 2016 IYLL periodic survey (Adam et al. 2017), the findings indicate that there is a needto strengthen young people’s engagement with sexual health promotion. Sexual healthmessaging should not only recommend behaviours but comprehensively address mainfactors that limit uptake of condom use and testing for STIs among young people living inAustralia. Some of these barriers have been extensively described elsewhere and possibleways to address these factors through sexual health campaigns and other activities havebeen suggested (Adam et al. 2017). Previous research found that norms around condomuse and testing for STIs were one of the major determinants of sexual health relatedbehaviours and that strengthening norms should be an important objective of sexual healthpromotion campaigns and other initiatives. In this research we also found that the socialimages of young people who use condoms and test for STIs are important aspects toconsider. There is scope for improving the social images of young people who embracesexual health promotion and making them appear trendier could contribute to social andbehavioural change. These findings provide an empirical validation of the main idea thatwas at the origin of the Trending Sexual Health initiative and offer new directions for thedevelopment and implementation of campaigns and other activities targeting young peoplein Australia