Strategic Communication in the HIV/AIDS Epidemic

This book promotes the use of strategic communication to fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Focusing on strategic communication for positive and measurable behaviour change, the authors elaborate on a wide range of issues including: the importance of advocacy and community mobilization; comprehensive approaches to prevention and the use of communication in reducing stigma; communication programmes for a wide range of specific groups including intravenous drug users and refugees; the role of communication in support of clinical and social services; the care and support of vulnerable children; and selected communication approaches such as entertainment-education, telephone hotlines and digital communication.

Case studies are employed to illustrate the concepts and show how strategic communication has been used in different developing countries for training and in designing communication programmes.

Neill McKee is a communication specialist with 35 years of experience in international development, 15 of which have been based in developing countries. At the Center for Communication Programs at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University from 2001 to 2003, he was the Senior Technical Advisor for communication on HIV/AIDS and adolescent health, and Associate Director for Communication Sciences, Health Communication Partnership. He is presently the head of CCP’s Healthy Russia 2020 Project, based in Moscow. Neill McKee is the author of Social Mobilization and Social Marketing in Developing Communities (1992) and chief editor and contributing author of Involving People, Evolving Behaviour (2000), two important books in the strategic communication field. He has worked with UNICEF in Asia and Africa from 1990 to 2000 and is the originator of the social cartoon characters Meena and Sara who have become popular role models for the empowerment of girls in South Asia and Africa respectively. He has also published a number of articles in the field of development communication and has produced over 30 films in international development in the 1970s and 1980s.

Jane T Bertrand is currently Director of the Center for Communication Programs and a Professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Population and Family Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins University. Dr Bertrand began her career in the mid-1970s in Information Education Communication (IEC) for family planning. From 1979–2001, she was a faculty member at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and she chaired the Department of International Health and Development from 1994–99. During the 1980s, she worked extensively on family planning operations research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and was living in Kinshasa when AIDS emerged as a frightening new disease. During the 1990s, her work focused primarily on program evaluation. Since her move to Johns Hopkins in 2001, her work has centered on behavior change communication for reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. She has written or co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed articles, and has written several manuals on program evaluation, including one that focuses on evaluating HIV/AIDS programs for NGOs.

Antje Becker-Benton, a native of Germany, has been working as a Health Communication Specialist with the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP) since 1997. She is currently seconded as Behavior Change Communication Advisor to the CORE Initiative, focusing on HIV/AIDS communication for faith-based and community-based programming. Ms Becker-Benton has been involved in HIV/AIDS work since the early 1990s, is experienced in developing strategic communication programs at the regional, national and community level and has worked with youth programs in various African countries. She lived and worked on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in 1996, to develop a youth for- youth radio talk show and local media campaign for the JHU/Center for American Indian and Alaskan Native Health. During her stay in South Africa from 2000–2001, she developed communication strategies for Daimler/Chrysler’s AIDS workplace program and for Bush Radio. Ms Becker-Benton holds Masters degrees in Political Science (Free University, Berlin) and Health Education/Promotion (JHU) and has published a “Guide to Community Health Communication,” for the GTZ in 1997.