Safe Sex Promotion at Festivals

In a world which deems people aged 16-25 as “The Hookup Generation”, it’s no surprise that Sexually Transmitted Infections are on the rise. According to a recent report by the South Australian Department for Health and Ageing, Australians aged 15-29 account for 81% of chlamydia notifications. The same report also says that numbers of Gonorrhoea have also risen – there were 470 notifications in 2010, compared to the 228 that were given in 2001.

Following this report, the NSW Festivals Initiative was developed by NSW STI Programs Unit, in partnership with Local Health Districts, Family Planning NSW and Sexual Health Infolink, in order to promote sexual health messages to the young music festival attendees.

The initiative developed a “Love Sex? Love Condoms!” info booth to appear at Music Festivals, which also contained a program called ‘Dare 2 Score’. This program allowed greater social media integration and also provided better referral information for sexually active people to get tested.

The LSLC Infobooth contained a quick quiz to determine the risk levels in a sexually active music festival attendee. This quiz asked questions about the number of partners that a person has, the methods of contraception, the frequency of sex, and the frequency of STI checks.

According to the Google Analytics page for D2S, there was a 93% increase of ‘New Visits’ to their website, following the music festivals with the LSLC Infobooths.

Not all of these visits resulted in an STI Check, but there was at least intention – and this was the key objective of LSLC and the STIPU, to educate and inform youths in Australia about sexual health.

Story and photo by Paige Lowman.