Trade’s Mpox Response
When the global Mpox outbreak occurred in 2022, Trade was at the heart of the response in the East Midlands. We played a key role in ensuring that gay and bi+ men in the Midlands knew how to protect themselves against Mpox and could access the vaccine when it became available.
More about the project
Most cases of Mpox in England that year were in London. As a result, most of the resources to combat Mpox went to London and the vaccine rollout was focused there. We worked at a national, regional, and local level to ensure information about Mpox made sense to communities outside London and people in Leicestershire could access the vaccine.
The Mpox outbreak disproportionately affected gay and bi+ men, as well as cis and trans women in their sexual networks. From our origins in the early 1990s, Trade has worked to get appropriate and accessible sexual health information to men who have sex with men who do not strongly identify with the LGBTQ+ community. In 2023, we developed new resources to speak to this group of men about Mpox in the language they use to describe themselves on apps like Grindr – discrete, open-minded, DL, and curious. We distributed these posters and postcards to barbers and gyms, rather than LGBT venues – to ensure that this vital information reach men who needed it.
We received funding from the UK Health Security Agency to fund our Mpox response.
