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Abstract
A sexual health promotion initiative called Frank was conducted in 2018 to promote a range of sexual health-related behaviours among young people aged 18-29 years in Australia. A survey was conducted among 1, 147 participants to estimate the level of awareness of the Frank initiative and assess its potential impact on attitudes, intentions and behaviours of young people in Australia. Of the participants, 8.4% reported having heard of the Frank website, including 4.0% who had visited the Frank website. Despite being lower than previously estimated, the level of awareness achieved in seven months by Frank was similar to what has been achieved by other sexual health promotion initiatives conducted online in Australia for a longer period. The analyses, which assessed any potential influence of having heard of the Frank website on sexual health-related behaviours, found some differences between participants who had heard of the Frank website and those who had not. These differences related to the frequency of sexual health conversations before engaging in sexual intercourse as well as the extent of condom use and testing for STIs. However, none of these differences were statistically significant, due to the low numbers of participants aware of the existence of the Frank website. It is likely that some of the differences observed could have reached statistical significance if the sample had included higher numbers of participants aware of Frank. In this respect, the results are encouraging and can contribute to the further strengthening of Frank and other sexual health promotion initiatives.
