DoxyPEP, AMR, and Queer Stewardship

Description

The emergence of STI prophylaxis using doxycycline (aka DoxyPEP) amongst gay and bisexual men (GBMSM) has been positively received by healthcare professionals, community health organisations, and community members. Early integration of DoxyPEP into clinical medicine has raised clear issues about antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and complex disruption of the human microbiome, which presents new challenges for sexual health research and practice. This includes refining existing HIV/STI prevention strategies and developing collaborative methods for engaging communities in conversations about sustainable antibiotic use and antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). This paper brings together interviews with UK health professionals with scholarship on STI/HIV health promotion to consider how the use of DoxyPEP plays into emergent calls for a queer AMS. Articulating differing perspectives between sexual health medicine and community health promotion, including competing testing and prevention priorities, I consider what a queer AMS might look like for queer community health, including social and ethical procedures for revising and assembling safer sexual practices in GBMSM context. Building upon Davis et al. (2022) and Broom et al. (2023), I argue that the assemblage of normative and non-normative use of DoxyPEP constitutes queer AMS through the negotiation of what I call a ‘threshold of accepted STI transmission’. I suggest that attending to this threshold reveals differing priorities between clinicians, community health specialists, and community members, that need to be acknowledged to collaborate and develop shared values for queer AMS in theory and practice.

Period	2 Jul 2025 → 3 Jul 2025
Event title	Sexual Health: Past, Present and Future
Event type	Workshop
Location	Birmingham, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National