Introduction Worldwide, young people have become increasingly vulnerable to HIV infection, especially those belonging to the key populations - the so-called “Young Key Population” (YKP). The Brazilian epidemic is largely concentrated in key populations and, over the last ten years, the aids detection rate among young males had a significant increase. Brazil, in partnership with selected NGOs, has developed an oral fluid rapid HIV peer-testing strategy tailored to key populations, called Live Better Knowing (LBK). Our aim is to provide an overview of HIV-related indexes of YKP tested on LBK.

Methods The LBK is an initiative driven in collaboration with NGOs, delivering HIV testing and prevention strategies targeted at the key populations and young people aged 15 to 24yo, since 2013. Trained peers accessed participants in social venues for the intervention and applied a questionnaire about their sociodemographic information and risk behaviour. Results presented here are from data obtained anonymously by the strategy, between June 2015 and October 2016.

Results Among the 26 010 participants aged 15 to 24yo, 65.2% were nonwhite, 65.7% reported drug use and 13% drug use and commercial sex combined. Overall, 53.8% reported condom use at last sexual intercourse and 7.9% reported STI symptoms in the last 12 months. The general HIV prevalence found was 1.2% and its distribution among cis women, transvestites, transsexual women, transsexual men, MSM and heterosexual cis men was 0.4%, 5.4%, 4.2%, 0.5%, 3.2%, and 0.5% respectively.

Conclusion YKP constitutes a high-risk population for HIV in urgent need of responses able to tackle their vulnerabilities related to the HIV acquisition. Given the combination of drug use with sex work, comprehensive harm reduction services need to be delivered. Despite the broad condom free distribution in the country, our analyses suggest the need to impact behaviours related to its use. LBK is a strategy tailored to groups who continue to face obstacles in accessing HIV services, thus, it should be expanded in order to reach out to more people.