Knowledge of sexual partner’s HIV serostatus and the practice of safer sex among heterosexual men of African descent in London, Ontario

ABSTRACT

Objective: Poor knowledge of sexual partners’ HIV status is a major contributing factor in the heterosexual spread of HIV in Canada. This study examined knowledge of sexual partner’s HIV serostatus and the practice of safer sex among self-identified heterosexual African, Caribbean and Black (ACB) men in London, Ontario.

Design: A cross-sectional data was collected from 156 heterosexual ACB men in London. The negative log–log link function was fitted to estimate the relationship between knowledge of sexual partner’s HIV status and condom use among ACB men.

Results: Findings show that ACB men who know their sexual partner’s HIV status are less likely to use condoms compared to men who do not know the serostatus of their sexual partner, controlling for other theoretically relevant covariates. In addition, the findings show that sexually active, single ACB men are less likely to use condoms. On the other hand, ACB men with higher education, employed and with income over 60 thousand dollars a year have a higher likelihood of using condoms.

Conclusions: Heterosexual ACB men who used condoms even when they did not know their sexual partners’ HIV status could be explained as a resilience-building strategy in response to their increasing HIV vulnerabilities. Heterosexual ACB men’s use of condoms is further associated with socioeconomic factors including income, employment and education that need to be addressed for an improved safer sex.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge
• heterosexuals
• African Caribbean and other Black men
• partner’s HIV serostatus
• condom use
• London

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the weSpeak participants for their desire and willingness to share their experiences in this study. We also like to thank Moses Kansanga and Daniel Kpienbaareh for their scholarly comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to thank the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN) for funding this study.