CAMP Safe  

If someone had told me when I was hired as CAMPsafe Director that I would have my hands on almost 18,000 condoms, I wouldn’t have believed it. Though it’s a lot of work, I am happy that so many have been distributed because it goes to show that the men of Rehoboth care for each other by protecting our community from the transmission of HIV and AIDS. What might be a dubious achievement for some means success for the condom fairy and kudos to all those who practice safer sex. Condom distribution has become one of our most popular CAMPsafe programs.

CAMPsafe 2003 achievements
Someone the other day asked me what the CAMPsafe program does. I thought for a minute and gave the generic answer that we provide outreach for the men who have sex with men community here on the Eastern Shore of Delaware. However, we do more than distribute condoms and lube. Here is some of the stuff that our program does— just in case you wanted to know.

This past year has been very exciting for the CAMPsafe program. The increased awareness and continuity of the CAMPsafe program among the men who have sex with men (MSM) community has allowed the CAMPsafe program to develop a very good reputation among the people who seek the program’s services. As a result, the CAMPsafe program has been acknowledged in the HIV prevention community as a model program for working with both rural men and men who come to a "gay" resort.

Due to the respect of our program in the professional community, CAMPsafe staff has been asked to speak at numerous conferences during the past year. These conferences have ranged from local to national conferences. Staff has led roundtable discussions, sat on panels and created a poster for poster sessions at national HIV/AIDS and STD conferences.

However, the most important part of the CAMPsafe program is working with residents of Sussex County and those members of the MSM community who come to the resort town of Rehoboth during the summer. Many of our programs occur during the summertime but we have programs off-season that reach year round residents. This fall we will start a skills building group that will look at keeping negative men HIV negative by helping them build appropriate skills. Services provided include, HIV testing and counseling, sexual health counseling, group level interventions, outreach, health promotion and marketing campaigns and doing outreach online in the male to male chatrooms on AOL and Gay.com.

Following are some the achievements of the CAMPsafe program for the last contract year, February 1-November 20:

Who is being served:

• Outreach services provided to 800 men who have sex with men. We are 200 men above our goal and still have a few more months of the contract to go.
• 125 HIV tests at CAMP Rehoboth.
• 85 HIV tests at SCAC.
• 142 individual sexual health counseling sessions were provided.
• 700 individuals have contacted us via our on-line HIV intervention program.
• 17,500 condom packets have been distributed.
• 1,757 additional condoms have been distributed.
• 13 public information events (health fairs, college diversity fairs, pride day, etc)
• The CAMPsafe program was given an additional grant by the Department of Public Health to fund a condom distribution program focusing on the "straight" bars in Rehoboth and Dewey.
• Money from this additional grant has allowed us to advertise our HIV testing and counseling services in the Cape Gazette and have a slide at the Movie Theaters at Midway for the next year.
• As CAMPsafe program director, I’ve worked with the STD Behavior unit at CDC to co-author three articles on a research project (risk taking among men who have sex with men in a resort community) that was undertaken with the HIV Behavioral Center at Columbia University. The articles have been submitted for publication.
• CAMPsafe worked with staff at the STD division of the CDC. We helped with an online survey about syphilis education and the media. An article has been submitted to the CDC for publication.
• CAMPsafe presented at a poster session at the first STD/HIV internet prevention conference sponsored by the CDC.
• CAMPsafe staff was part of a panel at the HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta that talked about using the internet as a prevention tool. As a result, CAMPsafe staff has been working with other non-profit organizations who are looking to use the internet as a prevention tool.

So, that’s just a brief of what the CAMPsafe program has done. We are still looking for people to help out by being part of our Community Board and to spend a few hours being an honorary condom fairy! If you are interested in these or other opportunities—please call Sal at 227-5620.

Happy Holidays!