Health Communication: Lessons learned from HIV and AIDS experience

Video conference 8 March 2001

The need for long-term investment in health communication was highlighted by participants at an international video conference to mark the official launch of Exchange on 8 March 2001.

More than 100 people from nine countries were involved in the video conference. Presentations based on practical field experience were made by people based in Sri Lanka, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Brazil, the USA, Switzerland and the UK.

A major lesson learned from the conference was that any kind of health communication should be long term and requires solid and comprehensive investment. Patience was identified as a key factor, due to the time it takes for messages to be understood and acted upon.

Tackling stigma

Openness was another issue highlighted in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Uganda’s experience was discussed, where participation of political and community leaders was crucial to that country’s success in reducing the incidence of new cases of HIV infection. The role of people living with HIV acting as spokespersons and communicating about the virus and its impact was cited as a major factor in breaking down the stigma associated with HIV and AIDS.

Entertainment-education approaches were discussed as an effective way of disseminating information and changing individual and social behaviour. Findings from projects in Bangladesh and South Africa were shared. A recent evaluation of the Soul City television drama in South Africa found that it was helping to decrease negative peer pressure and encouraged people to talk about the issue and support behaviour change.

It was also noted that good communication programmes need to be country specific, work closely with local communities and make use of local culture and traditional communication media such as music and drama. Programmes that help to increase the participation of young people were highly recommended as they could bring about informed decisions and encourage positive peer pressure. Careful research and evaluation about what works was also stressed.

Communication framework

Conference participants received a summary of a communication framework developed as part of a UNAIDS-supported participatory research process conducted through five consultative workshops to examine the global use of communication for HIV prevention, care and support. This framework stresses the role of five contextual domains – government policy, socioeconomic status, culture, gender relations and spirituality – in HIV and AIDS communications.

A copy of the entire framework is available as a PDF file from the UNAIDS website and a summary and a range of articles reflecting on the framework (which were published in a supplement to the Journal of Health Communication in 2000) are available from http://www.catchword.com

Participating organisations

Among the organisations taking part in the video conference were:

Canal Saude (Brazil)
Horizons (Brazil, USA, Zimbabwe)
Interactive Health Network (UK)
International Family Health (UK)
Johns Hopkins University Centre for Communications Programmes (USA)
Kenya AIDS NGOs Consortium (Kenya)
Ministry of Health (Uganda)
SafAIDS (Zimbabwe)
Soul City (South Africa)
UNAIDS (Switzerland)
USAID (Washington)
World Bank Institute (Washington)
Worldview International Foundation (Sri Lanka)