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Advertising DC's AIDS Epidemic
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It’s going to take a lot more than a poster campaign. This week, DC Appleseed released its fifth report card on the District’s response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It’s a follow up, in a sense, to a report issued earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which stated that at least three out of every one-hundred DC residents are infected with HIV or AIDS. The DC Appleseed report says the city has improved in some areas, such as HIV testing, condom distribution and clean needle exchange programs. But there’s one area where the District is just barely squeaking by -- public education.
The report gives the Adrian Fenty administration a whopping C+ in the area of educating the public, particularly school children. According to researchers, it’s actually an improvement over the last report card, but serious concerns remain. “While DCPS appears to be making progress and devoting more staff time and resources to implementing an HIV/AIDS curriculum, a lack of student assessment and limited teacher monitoring in both the public and public charter schools continues to raise questions about the effectiveness of the program.” In fact, DC Public Schools conducted no assessment of students during the first year HIV/AIDS lessons were given. An assessment was, however, performed by Metro TeenAIDS following the 2007-2008 school year. It found that while there were significant increases in student knowledge on sexual health, there was no significant progress in safer behaviors. Obviously, only so much can be done in the classroom. Youth are influenced, perhaps more heavily, outside the classroom. Their peers account for much of that influence. Their parents should account for some of that influence, but unfortunately that isn’t the case in a lot of households. DC Appleseed acknowledges its report cards have not specifically addressed the District’s efforts to reach young people outside of DCPS. So what can we use to fill that gap? I argue we start using more of the big bad media. But if we do, the message has to be clear.
You may have noticed the fledgling public awareness campaign that utilizes bus shelters in the city. Posters read “Got HIV” (a play on the “Got Milk” advertisements). One depicts former President Bush looking out a plane window, peering down upon devastated New Orleans. It reads: “AIDS is DC’s Katrina.” Another poster depicts two lovers, legs intertwined beneath white bed sheets. And in no way do any of these posters stress the negative aspects of contracting the AIDS virus. If anything, they poke fun at the problem, make light of it, even romanticize it.
The Bush/Katrina poster theme is all too ironic. Like George W. Bush, city officials have taken a somewhat stand off approach to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. They view the situation from miles away. Money is thrown at the problem out of hopes that various programs will have an impact, but God forbid we actually advertise the fact the nation’s capital has the highest infection rate in the entire United States. It’s understandable why city officials don’t want to make the epidemic widely known. Tourism and the hospitality industries are the city’s economic engines. We’re talking about DC after all, the crossroads of the free world, where sex is just another tool to entertain its visitors from around the world. Open the phone book and thumb through the dozen or so pages of escort services. Walk through some of the city’s prominent neighborhoods and notice the all-nude strip clubs in plain view. While your average family visiting from Wisconsin doesn’t necessarily take in such pleasures, your average visiting businessman or diplomat just might. Earlier this summer, my stepbrother and his family were visiting from out of town, when we walked by a bus shelter displaying an HIV/AIDS poster. My sister-in-law asked (quietly, so that the kids didn’t hear), “Does DC really have a problem with AIDS?” I had to explain that not only does the nation’s capital have the highest infection rate in the U.S., but it rivals that of some third-world countries. And it’s not surprising she would ask such a question, because it’s a situation that just isn’t publicized. That has to change.
Government agencies need to throw money into more television and radio commercials, something young people will actually take notice of. Let’s also require by law that those posters go up along the National Mall, as well as inside nightclubs and bars. And for God’s sake, let’s tweak the message. It’s high time we make it widely known this is something to be scared of. Let’s make it known this is something to be ashamed of. And more importantly, let’s convince youth it’s actually “cool” to wear a condom and engage in healthy sexual behavior. We know that reaching young people with effective HIV prevention messages is essential to the process. What was promising, sort of, was that significant funds were made available by the city’s HIV/AIDS Administration to launch a multi-media social marketing campaign targeted at young people. The campaign, dubbed REALTALK, was aimed at reducing the stigma of HIV testing. Billboards began running on Metro buses. The program even included a text messaging component linking youth to prevention services. Read: text messaging = cool! Finally, we were seeing the start of a campaign that could actually make a difference. Right? “The campaign, however, likely will be limited by the high expense of these advertisements. Billboards for REALTALK will run only twice for a few weeks over the next year,” the report says. What a Debbie Downer.
There's a rather significant statistic in DC Appleseed’s report. “The DC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System indicated that among high school students, 29-percent did not use condoms during their last sexual intercourse.” I used to live on a street in Northwest DC that was used a lot by young people as a cut-through to get to school. There was a lot of trash on my street. People didn’t really care to pick up after themselves. Often, I would come down from my apartment and find condoms on the sidewalk. Not once did I ever find a condom that had been taken out of its package. Isn’t that funny? Yeah, not really.
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