Building a social behavior change campaign around HIV prevention

Project:
PrEP Mexico

Location:
Mexico

Funders:
Viiv

Partners:
CISIDAT

Category:
Sexual & Reproductive Health
HIV/AIDS

Challenge

While significant achievements have been made toward UNAIDS’ 90-90-90 strategy to end the AIDS epidemic, there remains a lot of room for improvement. In Latin America, there is a clear need to focus on HIV prevention and treatment, especially for men having sex with men (MSM), who are the largest percentage of people in the region to be living with HIV. In Mexico specifically, most individuals living with HIV are between 25 and 29 years old, falling into the young MSM group.

PrEP, or Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, is a highly effective HIV prevention medication that helps in lowering the spread of HIV from sex by 99%. However, community-based organizations (CBOs) in Mexico face challenges in attracting young MSM to their clinics to learn about and utilize PrEP due to social stigma around sexual identities in Latin America.

Innovation

In partnership with CISIDAT, YLabs set out to discern the factors that drive or hinder young MSM from seeking PrEP and explore effective ways for CBOs to disseminate PrEP information to them through various social media channels.

Our team supported the co-creation and development of a social behavior change communications campaign aimed at young MSM in four regions in Mexico, focused on the following activities

• Collaboratively developed social media advertisements with young men who have sex with men (YMSM), addressing the primary obstacles and incentives for PrEP adoption through seven workshops with 26 YMSM and six experts

• Produced social media advertisements designed to elicit active engagement and PrEP inquiries from YMSM (see below).

• Evaluated the effectiveness of social media advertisements in prompting YMSM to visit community-based organizations (CBOs) and initiate PrEP usage.

Three of the ads created for social behavior change campaign

Results

After just a few weeks of running the campaign, 470 young MSM used social media to inquire for more information about PrEP and how to access it. Of those who connected with the CBOs, over 40% reached out about getting PrEP and 24% visited or made an appointment with a CBO for PrEP.

Overall, the campaign was successful, showing the potential of social media to reach YMSM, as well as demonstrating a clear demand for PrEP among YMSM, if informed. From our research with young MSM, we found that transportation and lack of time seem to be the biggest barrier to uptaking PrEP. These issues should be addressed by the CBOs in combination with social media awareness in order to increase the likelihood of PrEP use among young MSM.

Next Steps

The data and insights we gained will be used by CISIDAT to implement a social behavior change communications campaign on social media spanning different regions across Mexico. CISIDAT is also reviewing the channels that community-based organizations use for delivering PrEP, with the goal of mitigating transportation and accessibility issues for young MSM.

If you are interested in learning more about the PrEP Mexico project, please reach out to: contact@ylabsglobal.org.