The DENIM Collection

D.E.N.I.M.'s guiding principles:

•Social focus: a successful HIV prevention intervention for young gay/bisexual men needs to tie HIV risk-reduction to the satisfaction of other needs, such as developing friendships, having fun, and enhancing self-esteem.

•Empowerment philosophy: the project serves a mobilizing and empowering function with the community as young men take ownership of the project rather than having the project carried out for them

•Peer influence of safer sex messages: studies show that one’s peers are the most credible sources of information, and peer pressure is one of the most highly effective forms of influence.

•Multi-level approach: self-esteem, interpersonal and cultural issues, internalized homophobia, community norms, and many other factors all influence young men’s risk behavior. Since young gay/bisexual men engage in unsafe sex for a variety of reasons, interventions that focus solely on one level of factors will miss men who engage in unsafe sex for other reasons.

•Gay-positive/sex-positive: the project enriches and strengthens young gay/bisexual men’s pride about who they are, and encourages them to explore and celebrate their sexuality by not just focusing on condom use but by including a wide variety of safer sex behaviors.

•Community-Building: it is essential to build a community where men support each other about sexual risk reduction and obtaining HIV testing, where the social norms and expectations support HIV prevention, and where men help each other in coping with the stresses of being gay/bisexual.

•Diffusion of innovations: community-wide change comes about through a process of informal communication and modeling by peers within their friendship networks.