AEGiS-15IAC: Reaching the reluctant client: designing effective HIV prevention media to draw persons into services.

15th International AIDS Conference

Bangkok, Thailand - July 11-16, 2004

Reaching the reluctant client: designing effective HIV prevention media to draw persons into services.

Int Conf AIDS 2004 Jul 11-16; 15:(abstract no. C10363)

Fallon SJ
Skills4, Inc, Ft Lauderdale, FL 33305, United States

ISSUES: CDC's Advancing HIV Prevention initiative seeks to draw into services persons who may not have previously encountered traditional HIV programs. Can agencies with limited budgets afford glossy print media messaging to deliver messages and promote services?

DESCRIPTION: Social marketing print campaigns offer agencies means to deliver messages with much lower costs-per-viewer than the per-person contact cost in traditional outreach and group level efforts. Many grass-roots agencies feel that the overall costs of such campaigns are beyond their means, and that the skills sets needed to produce an effective campaign are beyond them as well. A powerpoint presentation with colorful examples of past campaigns (hits and misses) will guide participants through proper social marketing decision points, use of focus groups, and pilot testing. Participants will learn to assess barriers to risk sensitization, self-efficacy, and reasoned action. The workshop will introduce strategies that underlie successful for-profit print advertising. Participants will then create their own health messages, utilizing these tools in a small group activity.

LESSONS LEARNED: By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to: 1. Identify the decision points, barriers to change, and key values of their target audience. 2. Translate key behavioral guidance themes into accessible slogans and analogies. 3. Field test prevention marketing pieces, and evaluate campaign successes.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Agencies in developed and developing countries can produce locally appropriate, targeted HIV prevention media for far less cost than they may have imaged. Effective print media campaigns are not based solely in scare tactics. Nor are they merely referral lists. Properly designed, with community input, such media campaigns can also help agencies better understand their populations current knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

Keywords: AEGIS, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, Mass Media, HIV Infections, Population, Behavior, Advertising, Health Planning Guidelines, Culture, Developing Countries, Knowledge, Attitude, HIV Seropositivity, Humans, prevention & control, economics, education

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C10363