STD Prevention: Behavior Change

Safer Sex - Historical Notes

Types of Guidelines: 1. General Guidelines
General “safe sex” guidelines can be used in nation-wide prevention campaigns. They cover the basics, but do not go into every sexual detail. On the other hand, very detailed guidelines may be helpful in sexually sophistcated communities, i.e. in very large cities and among well-educated women and men everywhere who travel or have frequent contacts outside their immediate social circles. A good example are the guidelines proposed by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
Sexually comprehensive advice is less useful where the full range of possible sexual behavior is either unknown or taboo, and where people are not used to articulating their sexual interests.

General guidelines in Germany.
The German Federal Ministry of Health and Social Security, through its Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA), has developed these general guidelines and is distributing them in 19 different languages. Shown here are, from left to right, the English, Turkish, and Russian versions. Each wallet-size little brochure has 23 pages.