Insight
Led by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the progress made in the fight against HIV and AIDS over the past two decades is remarkable. PEPFAR alone has provided HIV testing and counseling to over 73 million and supported 11.5 million people on HIV treatment.
Identifying opportunities to strengthen and leverage prevention, care and treatment efforts will remain an important aspect of global efforts to achieve the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS’ ambitious 90–90–90 global goals.1
Action
There is no “magic bullet”- no single intervention that will prevent HIV transmission. In each area of intervention, success hinges on human behavior: a person seeking testing, receiving his or her results, initiating and adhering to treatment. That’s where The Manoff Group’s evidence-driven approach comes in. By applying best practices in behavioral science to HIV prevention, care and treatment, we can better target interventions and ultimately amplify results.
Change
Behavior change in HIV has frequently been criticized as difficult to measure and even more difficult to attribute. But in Zambia, TMG led design and implementation of the multi-channel Safe Love campaign, a campaign that wove frank, honest and important discussion on HIV prevention and treatment into socially and culturally appealing stories delivered in print, and on radio and television.
The Safe Love campaign reached every single district in Zambia- reaching more than 87% of the population- and more than three million households worldwide. More importantly, it was successful in mitigating HIV risk and improving key factors relating to testing, treatment and male circumcision in large portions of the population.
Among audiences highly exposed to the Safe Love campaign, we found:
23% improvement in people encouraging friends and family to go for circumcision
21% improvement in intention to get circumcised in next 6 months in highly exposed
19% improvement in condom negotiation
18% improvement in discussing with friends about multiple concurrent partners increasing the risk of HIV transmission
14% improvement in purchasing or obtaining a condom in past 6 months and
10% improvement in correct and consistent condom use