Communicating HIV and AIDS, What Works? A Report on the Impact Evaluation of Soul City's Fourth Series

Abstract

This article describes the evaluation of the HIV/AIDS communication aspect of the multi media Soul City health promotion intervention in South Africa. The intervention consists of a television and radio drama and print material. The evaluation was multifaceted with a before and after national survey and a national qualitative study. In the before and after survey change was measured and then multiple regression analysis was performed to assess the variables associated with the change. The qualitative study consisted of focus group discussions, which were analysed thematically. The studies show that there are numerous instances of community change and how the change is mediated at the community level. The studies also describe the change at a number of levels of the described behaviour change model for individuals.

The effect of changes in condom usage and antiretroviral treatment coverage on human immunodeficiency virus incidence in South Africa: a model-based analysis

“…School-based HIV/AIDS lifeskills programmes were introduced in South Africa in 1998, and increases in condom use among youth have been found to be associated with exposure to these lifeskills programmes [40], consistent with experience in other countries [41]. South African HIV communication programmes have been significantly strengthened in recent years, and exposure to these programmes appears to be associated with positive changes in knowledge and reductions in sexual risk behaviour and HIV risk [31,[42][43][44][45]. Although behaviour changes other than increased condom usage may have played a role in the decline in HIV incidence, no other form of behaviour change has been consistently reported in South Africa [46], and other forms of behaviour change have therefore not been considered in this analysis.…”

Leprosy: International Public Health Policies and Public Health Eras

“…The demise of the health promotion era reduced the momentum of health advocacy efforts commenced in the 1980s. This low momentum contrasts with effective patient-centered health activism associated with HIV/AIDS [46] and breast cancer [47], which were largely organized by civil society groups outside of the public health community. Renewed leprosy control-related activism, involving people affected by leprosy is needed to complement current approaches to reduce leprosy incidence and prevalence, as well as effectively socio-economically rehabilitate individuals and groups affected by leprosy [48].…”

Multilingual education in South Africa: the role of publishers

“…Vukani, the weekly bilingual English and isiXhosa newspaper, is distributed in the Cape Town townships; Isolezwe, the daily isiZulu newspaper in Durban, has a circulation of more than 95,000, outperforming the English-language dailies from the same publisher. Evaluations of a Soul City health promotion initiative show that high-quality glossy African language booklets distributed as inserts not only reached large numbers of the target audience receiving the newspapers but were also shared with others (Goldstein et al 2005). The enthusiastic public debate on radio about which books constitute 'classics' in the lead up to the launch of the Reprint of African Language Classics project at the Centre for the Book also suggests that there is indeed an interest in African language books, though the extent of their appeal is unclear.…”