How can HIV and AIDS education be delivered?

How can HIV and AIDS education be delivered?

There are a great variety of methods and materials that can be used to educate people about HIV and AIDS, including radio & television, booklets, billboards, street theatre, comic strips, and many more. The form in which HIV and AIDS education should be delivered depends on the characteristics of those who are being educated. In order to reach the target group, it needs to be considered which environments they will be most receptive in, and what media is most relevant to them.

How HIV and AIDS education should be delivered also depends on the principal aims of the education programme. Sometimes education on HIV and AIDS is about giving people information which they will remember on a long term basis, about how to protect themselves; the difference between HIV and AIDS; and helping to reduce discrimination. Other education strategies are intended to have more immediate effects, and may target people when they are most likely to take part in risky behaviour – in nightclubs or holiday resorts, for example.

There is no set or prescribed form that HIV and AIDS education should take, but there are certain things that need to be considered when carrying out or producing resources for HIV and AIDS education. The following questions have significant implications for the way in which HIV and AIDS education should be delivered:

• Is the education programme targeted at a specific risk-group or more generally at the population as a whole?
• What age are the people to be educated?
• Are the people to be educated already sexually aware?
• Have they been exposed to HIV and AIDS education before?
• Are they literate?
• What language or local dialect do they speak?
• Are there cultural issues to be considered? For example, attitudes to sexuality, or laws against portrayal of explicit images or language.
• Are people able to do what you're suggesting? There's no point in advising people to use condoms if none are available to them, or to use clean needles if needle exchanges are illegal.