Trusted Partner Campaign

This mass media behaviour change communication campaign addresses young partners in love relationships and is intended to encourage them to engage in safe sex. The campaign provides counselling sessions to all interested in testing their status, by using the services available at government hospitals.

After a series of focus groups with youth regarding sexual behaviour and barriers to condom use, the programme organisers say, “It became clear that the greatest barrier to condom use was trust in partners. 'Trust', however was understood as a purely emotive concept, based on factors unrelated to actual risk of STI [sexually transmitted infection] or HIV infection. Further formative research was conducted and the ‘Trusted Partner Campaign’ was developed.”

The campaign is aired via television and radio. The TV and radio spots are complemented by posters, billboards, flyers and discussion guides designed for use in interpersonal communication activities. Each of the 11 participating countries - Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe - had the opportunity to make country-specific modifications to the scripts, to pre-test materials, and to share information with their local donors. In order to adapt the materials to West and Central Africa countries, the campaign was translated into French and focus groups held in each country to verify the campaign's relevance and to identify necessary script changes. As with the East and Southern Africa campaign, country-specific modifications such as language, tag lines and logos were made.

Youth, HIV/AIDS.

PSI contracted "a local research agency, Gallup Republica Dominicana, to conduct a media Impact survey in April of 2003 with 1200 youth nationwide. The survey revealed high exposure to the Trusted Partner Campaign: 60% of the youth surveyed spontaneously reported having seen or heard the campaign, while 78% reported exposure to the campaign with aided recall. 96% reported a positive response to the campaign, and 43% spontaneously remembered the primary campaign slogan. The personal risk perception and behavior change messages were well understood: Of those who saw the campaign 55% correctly understood the central message to be "Use condoms even with your trusted partner", while 23% correctly interpreted the message to be that "you cannot tell if someone has HIV/AIDS just by looking at them." The campaign also appeared to have significant impact: 73.6% of the youth reported that the campaign made them think differently about their sexual behavior, while 48% reported that they adopted a new preventive behavior as a result of the campaign."