Radio as a Tool for Health Education: What Makes for an Effective HIV/AIDS Radio Campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Authors

  • Kaitlin Schroeder Stanford University

Keywords:

HIV/AIDS, radio, media, audience

Abstract

From the bustling cities of Zambia to the most rural parts of Lesotho, HIV/AIDS is a raging epidemic that affects over 15% of the adult population in many regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. Public health interventions often take the form of media campaigns, which utilize television, radio, and print advertisements to spread awareness and inform the population of risk factors, prevention methods, and treatment options. This paper will focus on HIV/AIDS radio programs in Malawi, Zambia, and other countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. It will analyze these programs' air times, audience, presentation style, and content, and identify how these factors influenced behavioral changes in the audiences. Additionally, this paper proposes promising techniques to ensure the success of future campaigns based on previous findings. Given these reviews of broadcasts of the past and their strengths and weaknesses, radio stations can better understand the reasons behind the programs' respective impacts on the target populations. Further, this methodology can be applied when considering new radio programs for health education for HIV/AIDS and beyond.

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Published

2016-06-15

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 3 (2016)

Section

Research Articles

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