African American women bear a disproportionate burden to HIV infections as opposed to women from other ethnicities in the United States. South Florida is among the regions with high reported cases of HIV and thus there is a need to formulate health promotion campaigns to help with the same. The use of female condoms is among the approaches that can be utilized to help with the reduction of new HIV infections.
PICO: In African American Women that are sexually active (P), are social marketing strategies promoting the use of female condoms (I) compared to the provision of standard health information (C) effective in increasing the self-reported cases of condom use during the last sexual encounter (O).
A comparison of research questions
Social marketing is among the effective strategies that have been applied to raising awareness and advocating for behavioral changes that reduce the transmission of HIV. The most popular social marketing campaigns have been on the use of condoms as a means of preventing the transmission of new infection cases. However, there is limited research and campaign on female condoms as compared to the use of male condoms. This is despite Medicaid allowing for reimbursement for female condoms across several states (Witte et al., 2017). LaCroix et al. (2014) focused on the effectiveness of mass media interventions in HIV prevention as a means to understand whether they should be adopted in the future. The research question is also similar to that of Friedman et al. (2016) who sought to determine the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns that largely apply mass media interventions. Akintobi et al. (2016) further conducted a pilot that sought to determine the impact of behavioral interventions such as social marketing campaigns through the “Color it Blue” campaign that was done on African Americans. The research questions of the articles thus centered on the themes of the impact of social marketing in promoting condom use and HIV prevention among African American women and the youth population.
A comparison of sample populations
African Americans bear a significant burden of all diseases including HIV. The younger generation also bears a significant risk for new HIV infection as they are still at the prime stage of their sexual exploration. Therefore, a majority of behavioral interventions are usually targeted for the younger generations. The study by Crosby et al. (2013) analyzed the predictors of persistent condom use among the African American population. Klein et al. (2016) analyzed the knowledge relating to HIV among community samples of African Americans living in the urban areas in the South. Chandler-Coley et al. (2017) further analyzed the perceptions of African Americans in colleges on their perception with regards to messages relating to the prevention of HIV transmission. The analysis of the African American population was also done by Hood et al. (2017) who developed a condom use message for African American women. The articles play a vital role in covering an array of issues affecting African American women with relation to social marketing campaigns on condom use as well as prevention messages for the transmission of HIV.
A comparison of the limitations of the study
Research studies are usually not perfect and often have several limitations. Research studies usually identify these limitations at the end of the study. However, research studies by Witte et al. (2017) and Crosby et al. (2013) have not provided the limitations of their studies. The limitation of Klein et al., (2016) is that it was conducted on an urban population, therefore it does not reflect the views of persons living in rural areas. LaCroix et al. (2014) focused only on the short term effects of the interventions and there are no clear findings on the impacts of social marketing over a long period. Friedman et al. (2016), on the other hand only focused on behavioral change campaigns. There is a need for future research that will evaluate the long-term impacts of social marketing campaigns and the study needs to be comprehensive to capture most typical campaigns.
Conclusion
The findings indicate that there is a need for the adoption of social marketing as they are effective in raising awareness and promoting behavioral changes. However, there is limited research on social marketing strategies on the use of female condoms. There is thus a need for future research on the effectiveness of social marketing promoting the use of female condoms. The unified recommendation across all research articles is on the benefits of adopting mass media as an intervention strategy. The articles recommend the adoption of mass media as well as the use of appropriate and attractive messages such as the use of funny video clips as well as short messages. There is a need for proper allocation of resources to ensure that social marketing is effective in achieving its objectives.
References
Chandler-Coley, R., Ross, H., Ozoya, O., Lescano, C., & Flannigan, T. (2017). Exploring black college females’ perceptions regarding HIV prevention message content. Journal of health communication, 22(2), 102-110.
Crosby, R. A., DiClemente, R. J., Salazar, L. F., Wingood, G. M., McDermott-Sales, J., Young, A. M., & Rose, E. (2013). Predictors of consistent condom use among young African American women. AIDS and Behavior, 17(3), 865-871.
Friedman, A. L., Kachur, R. E., Noar, S. M., & McFarlane, M. (2016). Health communication and social marketing campaigns for sexually transmitted disease prevention and control: What is the evidence of their effectiveness?. Sexually transmitted diseases, 43(2S), S83-S101.
Henry Akintobi, T., Trotter, J., Zellner, T., Lenoir, S., Evans, D., Rollins, L., & Miller, A. (2016). Outcomes of a behavioral intervention to increase condom use and reduce HIV risk among urban African American young adults. Health promotion practice, 17(5), 751-759.
Hood, K. B., Shook, N. J., & Belgrave, F. Z. (2017). “Jimmy cap before you tap”: Developing condom use messages for African American women. The Journal of Sex Research, 54(4-5), 651-664.
Klein, H., Sterk, C. E., & Elifson, K. W. (2016). Knowledge about HIV in a community sample of urban African Americans in the South. Journal of AIDS & clinical research, 7(10).
LaCroix, J. M., Snyder, L. B., Huedo-Medina, T. B., & Johnson, B. T. (2014). Effectiveness of mass media interventions for HIV prevention, 1986–2013: a meta-analysis. JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 66, S329-S340.
Witte, S. S., MacPhee, C., Ginsburg, N., & Deshmukh, N. (2017). Medicaid reimbursement for the female condom. American journal of public health, 107(10), 1633-1635.