Development and Implementation of Mass Media Campaigns to Delay Sexual Initiation Among African American and White Youth
By RICK S. ZIMMERMAN College of Nursing, University of Missouri–St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
HIV/STD infection among at-risk you and adults require education and communication about research finding. These findings support the conclusion that early sexual initiation is associated with STD’s and other negative outcomes. The National Institute of Mental Health support this research and the published findings. The article speculates about a national campaign to delay initiation of sexual intercourse among African American and White adolescents. The author categorizes the study in four parts as follows; rational and theoretical underpinnings; collection, screening; development of service announcements.
This research is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health grant 2-R01MH63705 (principal investigator: Rick S. Zimmerman). The authors thank Stephanie Van Stee for the feedback provided on an earlier version of this article.
The article talks about campaigns conducted in two cities – Charleston, South Carolina and Augusta, Georgia. The campaign were expanded to include five sections; (a) rationale and theoretical underpinnings of the campaigns; (b) collection, screening and assessment of existing public service announcements (PSAs) in the delay of sex area; (c) development of new PSAs for the campaigns; (d) study design and campaign airing plan; and (e) message exposure achieved in the campaigns. (Zimmerman 1)
The objective is to delay the age that adolescents initiate sexual intercourse, and some negative consequences could be potentially delayed or even avoided altogether.
African American’s are named as the “high sensation-seeking African-Americans” (Zimmerman, 1) the targeted group. White adolescents are the victims in this development campaign and target of the exposure message through PSA campaign messages.
Sensation-seeking is defined as, “the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience.” The present campaign effort used the sensation-seeking targeting campaign strategy by selecting and developing PSAs that were high in message sensation value (Zuckerman, 1994, p. 27).
This is a racist approach, and it suggests HIV/STD infection is an inherent African-American disease. This inference is related to many other forms of racist behavior like Architectural exclusion, and the cultural bias that is taught and enforced by Congress.
This article was written for researchers and medical journal publishing. For this article, a group of researchers co-authored this article. The co-authors are cited below;
SETH M. NOAR School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
PHILIP PALMGREN AND PAMELA K. CUPP Department of Communication, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA
BRENIKKI R. FLOYD Department of Psychiatry, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
PURNIMA MEHROTRA Department of Community Medicine and Health, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA
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