Online Program

Oral

HIV infection, STDs and pregnancy continue to affect young people disproportionately. The excess burden of these conditions in this vulnerable group may be caused by lack of accurate HIV/STD-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behavioral intentions (KABI) regarding HIV/STD prevention. This suggests that existing methods of prevention communication, such as public service announcements and other forms of traditional media, may be inadequate for young persons today. Furthermore, traditional health communication campaigns can be expensive, become quickly dated, are difficult to scale up, and lack entertainment value for the target population. Novel means of communicating health messages that take advantage of new media need exploration, especially media suited to and heavily used by today’s adolescent and young adult audiences. We used entertainment-education principles to create an engaging “motion comic” that instills KABI consistent with HIV, STD, and teen pregnancy prevention. A motion comic is a low-cost, revisable, scalable, and innovative digital health communication intervention. The proposed panel will have two purposes. First, in two presentations, we will explain why we chose to use motion comics as a means of educating young people about how they can address critical reproductive and sexual health issues to achieve and maintain optimal reproductive and sexual health. Second, in two presentations, we will explain the research processes and techniques used to create the motion comic intervention. Portions of our motion comic intervention will be screened to demonstrate the result of our efforts.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH) , Masters Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES)