MIAMI (Feb. 18, 2008) — William W. Darrow, a professor at Florida International University and a leading HIV/AIDS expert, has published a critical analysis of a campaign that was designed to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among gay and bisexual men in South Florida.
Darrow, a professor of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention in FIU’s Stempel School of Public Health, examined a 6-month period of the 2004 education campaign carried out by the Florida Department of Health. He concluded that the prevention effort failed to achieve key goals but provided lessons for the future.
Darrow’s findings are published in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Darrow commended the Florida Department of Health’s Bureau of STD Prevention and Control in Tallahassee for requesting an independent evaluation of the campaign’s impact.
“I believe that much was learned in the process of evaluation that should be used to improve future social marketing campaigns. By adding a more rigorous evaluation component, the social marketing campaign should be considered a success,” Darrow said.
The coalition for the campaign was supported entirely by federal funds. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided funding for social marketing campaigns in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and six other cities that in the early 1990’s were experiencing large increases in infectious syphilis among men who were having sex with men.
Dr. Darrow's analysis is available at http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/98/2/337.
For more information, e-mail Darrow at darroww@fiu.edu.
—FIU—
Media Contact:
Yusila Ramirez, 305-348-2716 or yramirez@fiu.edu
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