National Multi-channel Campaign Conveys Importance of Achieving Viral Suppression
“I am a Work of ART” – BETAH’s Award-Winning Campaign to Support the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. Initiative
The federal Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. (EHE) initiative is built on several pillars, including treating people with HIV rapidly and effectively to reach sustained viral suppression. To support work under the treatment pillar, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP) asked BETAH to collaborate with its HIV Team to create a national campaign that conveys the importance and benefits of viral suppression.
Team BETAH developed the “I am a Work of ART” campaign and its Spanish-language version, “Celebro mi salud”. The national campaign encourages people with HIV who are not in care to seek care and achieve viral suppression by taking antiretroviral therapy (ART). The campaign highlights the real-life stories of 14 people with HIV—the campaign’s creative partners—who have achieved and maintained viral suppression.
Effective Targeting
The campaign audience is primarily 18- to 34-year-old people who have been diagnosed with HIV and are not in regular care. Many barriers to HIV care can make it difficult to engage this audience, which often includes people who are Black, Latinx, LGBTQI+, and live in native and rural communities. Research suggests that this may be due to a lack of stable housing, economic insecurity, and other issues that take priority over health care.
Real-Life Success Stories and a Clear Call-to-Action
All materials focus on real-life success stories and feature creative partners who represent the campaign audience. QR codes allow people to discreetly access materials on HIV.gov and provide quick and easy access to the campaign landing page, where people can visit the HIV Testing Sites and Care Services Locator. The campaign emphasizes normalizing communication around HIV, and the tagline is Your HIV Status Doesn’t Define You. The call to action is to find the right care provider for you at HIV.gov/ART or HIV.gov/celebro-mi-salud.
Working with Community Partners to Implement the Campaign
BETAH worked with OIDP’s Engagement Teams to identify traditional and non-traditional partner organizations in the EHE priority jurisdictions of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Tulsa, Miami, and Washington, DC. Non-traditional partners included community-based groups such as food pantries, behavioral health services providers, and housing services providers.
Multi-faceted Promotions
Promotion consisted of a media campaign with digital media, social media, paid media, and radio media tours in English and Spanish, including an appearance on CNN en Español and a Facebook Live with blackdoctor.org. We also invited our creative partners to promote the campaign in exhibit booths and meet-and-greet sessions at national conferences. These activities have been well-received, with people excited to take photos with the creative partners and the banners that share their stories.
Compelling Campaign Materials
Featuring vibrant colors, the campaign materials include posters, flyers, business cards, social graphics, and two types of rack cards, one that provides basic HIV treatment information and a discreet card that does not reference HIV but includes a QR code that links to the campaign site. The posters, flyers, and informational rack cards all convey a benefit our creative partners experienced because of achieving viral suppression. We also produced three public service announcements in English and Spanish.
Campaign Progress
Click-through rates, impressions, and qualitative results suggest that the campaign is making significant headway. The HIV Care Services Locator received numerous click-throughs from the campaign website. Of these, 66% were attributed to the eight pilot communities. This is an important indicator of the campaign’s reach and ability to encourage people to use the HIV Care Services Locator, which is a significant step a person can take to complete the call to action. In total, there were more than 17 million ad impressions during the first summer of the campaign.
In the campaign evaluation, community partners who volunteered to coordinate campaign activities in the EHE jurisdictions indicated their collaborations were beneficial. In many cases, BETAH brought together organizations that had not previously collaborated, which the community partners said helped them learn about local resources. This allowed them to link their clients to the type of support they needed, whether it be HIV treatment and care or social services. The community partners also said BETAH-led workshops, monthly meetings, and the Campaign Community Partner Toolkit, materials, and web pages helped facilitate this success.
The “I am a Work of ART” campaign has received multiple awards, including excellence in website writing, microsite, and launch video. Visit the campaign’s English and Spanish web pages.
