Cross Cutting Issue: Media Communication for Behaviour Change Cal Volks

1. Cross Cutting Issue: Media Communication for Behaviour ChangeCal Volks By: Cal Volks

2. Presentation Outline • Recap what we mean HIV/AIDS Media Communication Campaigns • Look at why Media Communication Campaigns they important at HEIs and how we know that they work? • What kinds of HIV/AIDS behavior messages at HEIs are relevant for targeting with media communication in 2011? • What are some examples of current creative HIV/AIDS media communication campaigns that looked at addressing more complex behavior change? • Recommendations for Media Communication Campaigns in HEAIDS phase 3

3. HIV/AIDS Communication campaigns • Media Communication has been used in Health Promotion for many years both in and outside HEI HIV/AIDS programmes • Many theories. Entertainment-Education (Colle) approach made famous by Johns Hopkins CCP: “A strategic process is used to design and implement a media communication message (incorporating participation from the target audience) with both education and entertainment elements to facilitate social change”. • The approach includes planning, persuasive communication delivered in an entertaining way and feedback evaluation. Colle RD. 2000. The Enter-Educate approach for promoting social change. The Journal of Development Communication. Johns Hopkins University.

4. Why are HIV/AIDS Media Communication Campaigns important at HEIs? • Where HIV education workshops are voluntary, the students most at risk may not self select to attend. • There are often structural barriers at Universities that prevent reaching all students through the academic curriculum (e.g. lack of agreement that discipline specific HIV/AIDS education SHOULD be in all disciplines) • Participatory, Youth-culture friendly media communication and events = often the only way to reach students

5. Why are some people ambivalent about using HIV/AIDS media communication campaigns? • In the past 2 decades, HIV/AIDS campaigns in South Africa particularly those associated with high budgets and entertainment - a fair amount of criticism. E.g. The Sarafina play and the Lovelife campaign • An example of this criticism: from Warren Parker: “The LoveLife intervention… positioned South African youth – as fundamentally driven by internal values of materialist consumption…. The notion of 12-17 year old South African youth as mono-culturaland unified by sexual desire and materialist consumption, directly contradicted obvious diversities of language, culture and access to disposable income amongst youth.” Can’t do one size fits all. • However other media communication campaigns have been successful e.g. several orchestrated by the Treatment Action Campaign, formed in 2001 • Parker, Warren (2006). Claims and realities in programme evaluation: reflections on LoveLife, South Africa. http://www.cadre.org.za/files/Parker%20Toronto%20THPE0580.pdf

6. How do we know HIV/AIDS Media Communication Campaigns Can Work ? • The 2010 document produced by HEAIDS for Higher Education, Guidelines for effective HIV and AIDS Communication: Rules and tools for Campus Programmes (P.3) “ There is a fair amount of scepticism about the power of communication campaigns to achieve behaviour change...but there is a whole body of research that shows that behaviours promoted in South Africa’s best known HIV and AIDS campaigns are being adopted by an increasing number of people, especially by teenagers and young people in their early 20’s. The survey found that the campaigns had statistically significant effects in the following areas: using a condom...; discussing HIV testing with one’s sexual partner...; having ever had an HIV test; Helping someone sick with AIDS; knowing about ARV treatment for AIDS; having a positive attitude towards living with HIV and AIDS...”. • More focussed evaluations by Soul City and Khomanani over a number of years have established changes in knowledge, attitude and behaviour that relate directly to the messaging of some of their recent campaigns.

7. How do we know HIV/AIDS media communication campaigns can work cont ? In a YRBS conducted at UCT in 2009 (with results generalisable to the UCT residence population) • 75% of the sample of respondents who had attended HIV/AIDS awareness events thought that the activities they had attended were “worth their time”. • 72% thought that they learnt something new.

8. What do we already know about MCP • We are competing with brand marketing for young people’s attention so we need to be as good. • Use the fact that young people want to operate in a digital age (social networking e.g. mix it, facebook, twitter and other online platforms). E.g. Drive attention to a web site.

10. What kinds of HIV/AIDS behavior messages at HEIs are relevant for targeting with Media Communication in 2011? Prevention Messages : Cannot just be saying Abstain, Be Faithful, Use a Condom HEAIDS National Prevalence Survey (2010) tells us : • “HIV prevention needs to depart from simple awareness campaigns, condom provision and VCT provision”. • “It is well established in the literature that going through VCT has little influence on HIV prevention among individuals who test negative. VCT should therefore be seen as a supplementary strategy” ( Not the only prevention communication strategy). • “We need to develop strategies on each campus to reduce susceptibility to risk at a systemic or environmental level”. Address the contextin which HIV can spread – e.g. look at alcohol use; gender dynamics; social identitiesthat give rise to risky behaviour • “ The HIV epidemic is heterogeneous within and between institutions”. A one size fits all model will never be effective. We need to have a range of media communication.

11. What do we mean by moving away from simple communication messages? Target Specific groups: • Nat Prevalence Survey: “Special efforts must be made to ensure that female students, older students and male members – including men who have sex with men – in the campus community are reached in HIV prevention efforts.”

12. What do we mean by moving away from simple media communication messages cont ? E.g. Media and Events that communicate about Intergenerational sex Nat Prevalence Survey: “It is important to promote an understanding among younger students and staff of the higher risk of having older partners”. Concurrent sexual partners Nat Prevalence Survey : “Avoiding concurrent or over- lapping sexual partnerships should be given much closer attention in campus campaigns. Need to be careful of language. Students may not call it Concurrent Sexual partners, but overlapping or “having game”.

13. What kinds of HIV/AIDS behaviour messages at HEIs are relevant for targeting with Communication in 2011? Support for PLWH/A and Anti HIV Stigma campaigns: • You may not be aware that you have stigmatized HIV positive people in the past, watch your language! • It is up to all of us to build an HIV and AIDS stigma free Higher Education community.

14. Examples of Prevention Campaigns from SA Universities

15. Examples of Prevention Campaigns from SA Universities

16. Examples of Stigma Campaigns from SA Universities Bird Campaign 2006 “Can I tell you?” 2007

17. How can we improve HIV/AIDS Media Communication at HEIs ? Veena Parboo Rawjee in her article HIV/AIDS Campaigns: Challenges At Higher Education Institutions In South Africa (2010) recommends; • Campaign objectives should be stated in measurable terms; • Messages should be designed using theory and should follow from a needs analysis • Audience should be segmented (no one size fits all) • Campaigns should be pre-tested with the target audiences before being implemented ; • Financial and organizational support at the highest levels must be sought to ensure a critical mass of resources;

18. How can we improve HIV/AIDs Media Communication at HEIs cont…? • Multiple channels of communication should be used; • Formal methods of evaluation should be conducted of the overall campaign. • Anecdotal evidence from programme managers tells us that staff shortages, resource shortages and lack of training in campaign design and specific campaign monitoring & evaluation prevent all this from happening and yet if we put these pieces in place, e.g. evaluate and document responses to media communication camapigns, it might enable us to raise funds for our programmes because we might be able to proove that we are effective

19. Recommendations • We need to raise funds to implement planned, evaluated diversified and targeted media communication for a variety of groups on a variety of campuses. • To resolve the best communication strategy between HEAIDS and HEIs around encouraging resources for HIV/AIDS education such as media communication. E.g. Is it from HEAIDS to the HEI executive (with the aim of getting them to commit funds to HIV/AIDS incl. media communication) but which anecdotal evidence shows they just forward to the IO who they tell to do all kinds of education on limited funds? Is it direct to the IO who then “fight” with the exec for funds? • Train HEI IOs to develop communication campaigns using research and evaluation • To have a data base where posters and event story boards that have already been developed can be shared (provided credit is given).