Compared with their peers who have sex only with women, young men who have sex with men (MSM) are less likely to receive HIV education in school.

Publishing their findings in LGBT Health, researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Youth Risk Behaviors Surveillance System, focusing on responses from the 13 states in which the survey asks about the sex of the respondents’ sexual partners and whether they received HIV education in school.

Out of 16,372 male respondents, who were all of high-school age, 94.1 percent reported sex only with women, 2.9 percent reported sex only with men and 3 percent reported sex with both men and women.

Eighty-four percent of the young MSM said they had received HIV education (including 81.1 percent of those who had sex with both men and women and 86.8 percent of those who had sex only with men), compared with 90 percent of those who reported sex only with women.

Half of the young MSM reported using a condom the last time they had sex, compared with 72 percent of the young men who reported having sex only with women.

Overall, receiving HIV education was associated with a lower likelihood of having three or more sexual partners during the previous three months and a higher likelihood of using a condom for the last act of intercourse. Among young MSM, having received such education was associated with more than a 2-fold increase and a 5-fold increase in the likelihood of each of these outcomes, respectively.

To read a press release about the study, click here.

To read the study abstract, click here.