HIV Prevention Planning Council Plans More Evaluation for HIV Ads

HIV Prevention Planning Council Plans More Evaluation for HIV Ads

San Francisco's HIV Prevention Planning Council (HPPC), an advisory group composed of community members and representatives from AIDS service organizations, adopted goals for 2007 at its first meeting of the year on Jan. 11.

HPPC Co-Chair Tracey Packer, interim HIV prevention director with the city's health department, said the tone of social marketing messages and campaigns funded by the council "will be more and more of an issue this year."

Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, director of the department's STD prevention and control section, called for better evaluation of the social marketing campaigns. As campaign sponsors, HPPC should know what outcomes are expected and how campaigns will be evaluated. "Social marketing campaigns done by professionals can have a significant impact and can be effective," he said. "Any evaluation should not be done by the funded entity but by a third party or other group that does rigorous evaluation." He cited the evaluation built into its "Healthy Penis" campaign, which found that men who had seen the cartoon ads featuring penis and syphilis sore characters were more likely than those who had not to get tested for the STD.

But evaluating HIV prevention or anti-crystal meth campaigns, which HPPC has funded, proves more of a challenge, noted panel member Tom Kennedy, who does public health marketing for the health department and federal agencies.

"In the case of something like syphilis and social marketing, it is pretty easy to evaluate those kinds of messages," said Kennedy. "You can look and see the rates of syphilis in the city because it is reportable." "It is much harder to evaluate the effectiveness of social marketing around meth. The number of bags of crystal bought and sold is not reportable."

The study revealed Trichomonas looks and acts in complex ways. "The organism is really funky to look at," Carlton noted. It has four flagella streaming from its apex, a tail, and an "undulating membrane, which looks like a frilly nightgown," she said. The microbe invades by flattening itself and inserting its tendrils into the wall of the vagina or urethra, she said. "It starts to secrete a lot of nasty proteases and pore-forming proteins to degrade vaginal tissue." "It produces hydrogen. That is probably what produces the gray-green frothy discharge from women," she said, adding that other gases it produces are the likely culprit of the microbe's characteristic fishy odor.

Just two drugs, both from the same class, are approved for treating Trichomoniasis infection. However, the microbe is already resistant to one of the drugs, the researchers said.

Unlike many other STDs, Trichomonas can in rare instances be transmitted by toilet seats or wet towels.

The examination of the gene map did indicate some weaknesses, as well as some good ways to possibly identify the infection more easily and earlier in patients, the researchers pointed out. "We found a few chinks in the armor," said Carlton.

The study, "Draft Genome Sequence of the Sexually Transmitted Pathogen Trichomonas vaginalis," was published in Science (2007;315(5809):207-212).

Bay Area Reporter (San Francisco) (01.18.07):: Matthew S. Bajko

We are providing the above information as a public service only. Providing synopses of key scientific articles and lay media reports on HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases does not constitute endorsement. The above summaries were prepared without conducting any additional research or investigation into the facts and statements made in the articles being summarized, and therefore readers are expressly cautioned against relying on the validity or invalidity of any statements made in these summaries. This CDC HIV/STD/TB Prevention News Update also includes information from CDC and other government agencies, such as background on MMWR articles, fact sheets and announcements.

Most people infected with HIV carry the virus for years before manifesting AIDS. During that period, infected people will have few, if any, symptoms yet they can transmit the virus.
The percentage of women with AIDS has increased steadily, and the percentage of people infected heterosexually has also increased, surpassing the percentage infected through injecting drug use.
During 2001, there were 35575 newly diagnosed cases of HIV infection. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates now that 40,000 new cases of HIV transmission occur every year.
Of the people infected with the virus of AIDS in the USA in the year 2001, 42% were whites, 37% blacks, 20% Hispanics and <1% Asians and Pacific Islanders and <1% American Indians and Alaska Natives.
During the 1990s, the HIV epidemic shifted steadily toward a growing proportion of AIDS cases in blacks and Hispanics and in women.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the cause of AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome). The presence of HIV in the body can be detected in several ways. The most common is the HIV-ELISA Antibodies test.

The HIV-ELISA looks for the body response to the virus manifested by the presence in your blood of Antibodies to HIV proteins. Antibodies are special proteins that our Immune System produce in response to the presence of HIV.

The test performed on your sample actually consists of two tests: a Screening test and a Confirmatory test. The screening test procedure is called an ELISA—Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorbent Assay or an EIA (Enzyme Immunosorbent Assay). The confirmatory test is used in the event your HIV-ELISA is positive and/or equivocal and is the procedure used is the Western Blot Assay (WB)

The screening and confirmatory tests are usually done using small samples of blood. If a sample of blood tests positive repeatedly in the screening test, it will be confirmed through the Western Blot test. People will be informed that they are infected with HIV only after both the screening and confirmatory tests have shown a positive (reactive) result.

Positive HIV antibody tests results are over 99% accurate when confirmed. Negative HIV antibody tests are over 99% accurate if it has been at least six months after a contact with a potentially HIV-infected partner. False negatives or false positives occur rarely.

Antibodies to HIV can be detected in the blood, in the urine or in the saliva. People produce antibodies with different speeds and therefore the time interval between infection and the development of antibodies to HIV can go from four weeks to six months from the exposure date or SDC ( Suspected Date of Contact). The appearance of antibodies in a blood or urine sample of a person which was known to be negative to HIV is called Seroconversion.

The HIV Elisa results are usually available in one or two business days.

STDWeB provides only health screening services. Tests are provided only for personal information and/or risk identification purposes. STDWeB does not diagnose or treat medical conditions. STDWeB screenings do not take the place of a physician care. Transactions with STDWeB are confidential and will not be shared with third parties. Tests with "positive" or "indeterminate" result may require confirmatory testing and may involve additional charges.