Maurice Nagington

This article explores how nursing ethics can be informed by the experiences and perspectives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning plus (LGBTQ+) people. It discusses research on cancer disparities for LGBTQ+ patients, demonstrating the need for culturally tailored interventions. Research in this area often has a narrow focus on improving care for marginalised groups, rather than considering what dominant healthcare approaches could learn from these groups. Through examining queer theory and areas such as human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) activism, the author advocates for a ‘queer ethics of care’ that challenges the way traditional healthcare hierarchies manage events such as the recent mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) outbreak.

In recent years, dating apps have become important allies in public health. In this paper, we explore the implications of partnering with dating apps for health promotion. We consider the opportunities and challenges inherent in these collaborations, paying special attention to privacy, trust, and user care in a digital environment.Despite their potential as targeted health promotion tools, dating apps raise significant ethical concerns, including the commodification of user data and privacy breaches, which highlight the complexities of blending healthcare initiatives with for-profit digital platforms. Furthermore, the paper delves into issues of discrimination, harassment and unequal access within these apps, factors which can undermine public health efforts.We develop a nuanced framework, emphasising the development of transparent data policies, the decoupling of content moderation from health initiatives and a commitment to combat discrimination. We underscore the importance of embedding app-based health initiatives within broader care pathways, ensuring comprehensive support beyond the digital domain. This essay offers vital insights for public health practitioners, app developers and policymakers navigating the intersection of digital innovation and healthcare.

This book explores the relationship between COVID-19 and AIDS. It considers both how the earlier HIV pandemic informed our engagement with COVID-19, as well as the ways in which COVID-19 has changed how we remember and experience AIDS. Individual sections focus on sexual and intimate relationships, inequalities and injustice, the progressive biomedicalisation of the response (in the absence of a vaccine or effective treatment or cure), and professional, practitioner and community perspectives on the pandemics. The authors come from a wide variety of backgrounds – including public health, nursing, law and legal studies, political studies, and the humanities and social sciences. The book contains contributions by established writers such as Dennis Altman, Shalini Bharat, Tim Dean, Deborah Lupton, Shubhada Maitra, Pauline Oosterhoff and Michael Tan, as well as chapters by Chris Ashford and Gareth Longstaff, Bernard Kelly, Dean Murphy and Kiran Pienaar, and Theodore (ted) Kerr. This thought-provoking and timely volume includes case studies from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, the UK, the USA and Vietnam. It has been written for students and scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including sociology, healthcare, public health, social work, anthropology, and gender and sexuality studies. The book will also be of interest to the general reader who wants a better understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of modern-day pandemics and the personal and community responses to which they give rise.

This book explores the connections between the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics and how both compel us to reflect on our close relationships with viruses. Although there are differences, both pandemics share similarities in relation to their political, social and cultural features. In this introduction, the editors reflect on the process of conducting research amidst a pandemic, and on the multiple, complex and multidirectional ways in which HIV influences COVID-19 and COVID-19 changes HIV. The book brings diverse disciplinary perspectives into conversation with one another to explore how pandemics profoundly impact practices of intimacy and relationships, how social factors are often neglected in responses to viral times, and finally the value of activism, community engagement and social justice. Overall, the book looks back at the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics to envision more equitable pandemic responses and looks forward using COVID-19 as a departure point to rethink the role of viruses in intimate life, social discourses and activism.

This letter explores the societal aspects and healthcare implications that underlie thinking about mpox (formerly known was monkeypox), in the 2022 outbreak, as a sexually transmitted infection (STI). The authors examine what underlies this question, exploring what is an STI, what is sex, and what is the role of stigma in sexual health promotion. The authors argue that, in this specific outbreak, mpox is an STI among men who have sex with men (MSM). The authors highlight the need of critically thinking about how to communicate effectively, the role of homophobia and other inequalities, and the importance of the social sciences.

The objective of this research was to explore how gay men use drugs in their sex lives, colloquially called “chemsex”. This paper reports on a sub‐theme within the research about support, care and peer support. Longitudinal interviews were conducted with 20 gay and bi men between April 2017 and July 2019. Participants were recruited via geolocated dating apps (n = 17) and snowball sampling (n = 3). The main findings of this research are that medicalised forms of support for gay and bi men engaging in chemsex are often tardy in their responses to need, and whilst helpful for cessation of drug use, fail to address the holistic needs of the participants. A wide variety of peer support was practiced amongst the sample which often echoed previous forms of peer support practiced in the LGBT+ community. It was offered by both people who engaged in chemsex and those who did not and was highly beneficial to people who experienced problems with chemsex. However, peer support was also limited by factors such as shame and the instability of those offering support. In conclusion, we suggest that medicalised forms of chemsex support could benefit from more rigorous and rapid forms of assessment for problematic chemsex, and also provide infrastructure and training to peer support initiatives. We also suggest that medical services could learn from patients and their peers about what support needs remain unaddressed by professional services, and engage in collaborative approaches to practice development.

This letter explores the societal aspects and healthcare implications that underlie thinking about monkeypox, in the 2022 outbreak, as a sexually transmitted infection (STI). The authors examine what underlies this question, exploring what is an STI, what is sex, and what is the role of stigma in sexual health promotion. The authors argue that, in this specific outbreak, monkeypox is an STI among men who have sex with men (MSM). The authors highlight the need of critically thinking about how to communicate effectively, the role of homophobia and other inequalities, and the importance of the social sciences.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) (Truvada) is a medication which if taken correctly is almost entirely effective in preventing HIV infection. In regions and countries where it has been widely taken up, HIV seroconversion rates have significantly decreased. Alongside testing and treatment, it offers the very real prospect of ending HIV infections. However, in England, commissioning it has (and still is) a controversial process, where NHS England has repeatedly raised supposed ‘uncertainties’, first legal and then scientific. The same has not happened in Scotland, where PrEP was commissioned to anyone who needed it in April 2017. This article presents a close reading of the IMPACT trial protocol, which we conclude cannot answer the questions it sets out to answer. We then suggest that the uncertainties the trial claims to address are in fact a tool of power which is deployed to strategically ration healthcare; introduce uncertainty about commissioning PrEP; and shift the boundary between individual responsibilities and state responsibilities for public health and HIV prevention. We conclude that all the above constitute an unethical use of clinical trial rhetoric, systematically discriminate against minority and vulnerable groups, and ration healthcare for those who most need it. As such, we call on all academics, clinicians and activists to resist further unethical misuses of clinical trial rhetoric.

Judith Butler is one of the most influential late 20th and early 21st century philosophers in regard to left wing politics, as well as an active campaigner for social justice within the United States and worldwide. Her academic work has been foundational to the academic discipline of queer theory and has been extensively critiqued and applied across a hugely wide range of disciplines. In addition, Butler's work itself is extensive covering topics such as gender, sexuality, race, literary theory, and warfare. This article can only serve as a taster for the potential application of her work in relation to nursing, which is in its infancy. This introduction covers three of the potentially most productive themes in Butler's work, namely power, performativity, and ethics. Each of these themes are critically explored in turn, sometimes in relation to their actual application in nursing literature, but also in relation to their potential for producing novel critiques of nursing practice. Suggestions are made about how Butler's work can develop nursing research and practice. The article concludes with a short summary of Butler's key works as well as suggested reading for people interested in examining how her theories have been applied across different academic settings.