Introduction to the Special Section on Sexual Health in Gay and Bisexual Men

In 2014, we organized an invited meeting of some of the leading scholars studying various aspects of sexual health in gay and bisexual men. Building on an earlier meeting we hosted in 2012 on gay and bisexual male couples and sexual health that resulted in a special section of Archives of Sexual Behavior (Mustanski & Parsons, 2014), this second meeting expanded the focus on romantic relationships to other interpersonal influences on sexual health such as social/sexual networks.Talkswith this focus illustratedthepitfallsandpotential of research on gay male couples, and the role that network science can play in understanding sexual health, HIV transmission risk behaviors, and health disparities among gay and bisexual men. A second theme of this meeting was how researchers can create interventions that are responsive to the multiple and often co-occurring psychosocial health inequities experienced bygayandbisexualmen.The term‘‘syndemic’’(Singer, 1994) has been used to describe these co-occurring epidemics, and substantial research has documented their existence and relevance toHIV/AIDSamonggayandbisexualadult (e.g.,Mimiaga et al., 2015b; Parsons,Grov,G Stall et al., 2003) and youngmen (e.g.,Herrick, Stall, Egan, Schrager, K Mustanski, Garofalo, Herrick, & Donenberg, 2007) as well as relevance to other outcomes like suicidality (Mustanski,Andrews, Herrick,Stall,&Schnarrs,2014).While therelevanceof thesepsychosocial health issueshasbecomeclear,whathasbeen less clear is how interventions can be responsive to multiple health issues simultaneously. In this regard, talks examined a broad range of formative and intervention-based research on what are considered the major syndemic conditions that drive sexual risk behaviors among gay and bisexual men (substance use, depressionandmental health, trauma related to childhood sexual abuse and intimate partner violence, and sexual compulsivity). Finally, crossing both areas of focus, the role of methodological considerations, measurement, and decisionmaking, as well as the unique health disparities faced by ethnic and racial minority gay and bisexual men was examined. Papers presented at this conference were invited for submission and to undergo peer review for consideration for publication in this special section of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Thefirst set of articles addressesnetwork science, couplesbased approaches, and other interpersonal influences on the sexual health of gay and bisexual men. Neighborhood-level influences on HIV status were examined by analyzing neighborhood-leveldata fromtheUSCensusandotherpublic sources and individual-leveldata fromalongitudinalstudyofyoungmen who have sexwithmen (YMSM) living inChicago (Phillips et al., 2015). Using data from an intensive sub-sample of participants from the same longitudinal study, Birkett, Kuhns, Latkin,Muth,andMustanski (2015) lookspecificallyat thesexual networks of these Chicago-based YMSM and how individual,partner, andnetworkcharacteristicsarerelatedtosexual health.Moving toLosAngeles, the nextarticle takes advantage of the emergence of geosocial networking applications to identifyhowsocialnetworkcomposition is related to substance use among gay and bisexual men (Holloway, 2015). Stephenson, White, and Mitchell (2015) present results from a sample & Brian Mustanski brian@northwestern.edu