What is an effective way of educating men at high risk for HIV about the importance of home-based HIV testing and prevention? Talk to them where they hang out, on Facebook and other forms of social media.

A team of researchers, led by Sean D. Young, assistant professor of family medicine and director of innovation at the Center for Behavior and Addiction Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, set out to do just that.

“We created communities from scratch,” said Young, referring to the invitation-only Facebook groups that were designed to provide health information, and to increase the rate at which men used HIV testing kits.

Their findings have been published in the Sept. 3 issue of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The National Institute of Mental Health and the Center for HIV Education, Prevention and Treatment Services at UCLA paid for the study.

In a world where social media continues to evolve, one of the key aspects about using it is making sure that the platform is something that people still use.

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