Advocating for Effective Youth HIV Prevention Interventions
Now that you know that many young people are at a high-risk for HIV, that your government has committed to important goals for helping young people lead healthy lives and avoid HIV transmission, AND that there are HIV prevention programs that work for young people, you can take action.
The first thing that you need to do is "know your epidemic". As has already been explained, in some countries the HIV epidemic affects the general population, and in others it is fairly restricted to most-at-risk groups. What needs to be done, and with whom, will depend on the type of epidemic in your country or community. You can find information about this from NGOs working on HIV or from the government's national AIDS organization. There are also many documents that you can find on the UNAIDS website: www.unaids.org
Prevention programmes aren't just for adults to implement – young people can be active peer educators on issues of sexual and reproductive health, and HIV prevention in all the settings included in this study: schools, health services, media and communities. That makes sense when you think about it – if young people want to talk about sex, they would often rather talk to someone their own age than to a parent or teacher. There may already be a training program for peer educators in your community – try contacting local organizations that work with young people and/or sexual health to see if you can join an existing network.
Remember, peer educators have to be informed and knowledgeable about many aspects of sexual health before they begin talking to their peers! Check out publications such as this one from Family Health International if you're thinking about starting your own program and need help understanding what works and how to do it - http://www.fhi.org/en/HIVAIDS/pub/guide/peertopeerguide.htm.
If you're starting an effective HIV prevention project, the TakingITGlobal (TIG) online community offers a host of free resources to help you start a project, including project pages (which operate like a free website that’s easy to update) with group listserves, wikis and shared documents – www.takingitglobal.org. Also check out TIG's HIV/AIDS Youth Guide to Action - http://issues.takingitglobal.org/hiv that helps you create an "action plan" for creating change around HIV.
Want to work on a different aspect of HIV and AIDS, like reminding your leaders they made promises to help prevent HIV in young people? Political advocacy can be a useful approach to hold governments accountable to their commitments, and to create or change policies to reduce young people’s risk of HIV. The Declaration of Commitment (DoC) we discussed earlier is an important tool to use in your advocacy, and there are only TWO years left to achieve its commitments to youth by 2010! Here are some ideas for getting started:
Write a National Youth Shadow Report - (http://www.youthaidscoalition.org/pages.html?page=UNGASS)
National Youth Shadow Reports are researched and written by young people who investigate their country's progress and failures towards achieving the DoC and document what still needs to happen to meet the DoC goals.
Contact the media to explain your country’s commitments to protecting young people from HIV and what progress has been made (or not made) so far. You could write a brief opinion article that is well researched, offer to write an investigative story for the news department, etc.
Contact your political representatives to ask what they are doing to meet the DoC and provide some local statistics on young people’s knowledge and practices surrounding HIV.
Meet with community leaders or local public officials to explain the DoC goals (if they do not know them already) and request their support and involvement in advocating for youth-friendly health services (health providers that are trained, services that are affordable and accessible, that offer a range of services, etc.) or spreading awareness.
Investigate local health clinics in your area to see if they are "youth-friendly." If they are not, form a committee to help a clinic improve its services for young people. Stay tuned to the GYCA website for the Summer 2009 release of the youth organizing kit Advocating for Youth-Friendly Health Services.
Contribute to iaids.org, an AIDS wiki set up by UNICEF, GYCA and TIG to share information about young people and HIV/AIDS, and what works in your community.
Advocate for additional research to investigate the needs of young most-at-risk populations, so that we can invest in prevention that works for them. The Preventing HIV in Young People report notes that little is known about the needs of young people most-at-risk for HIV. Few existing studies focus on evaluating prevention interventions for most-at-risk young people in developing countries – shocking because these young people are often at the center of concentrated HIV epidemics. Most-at-risk young people need policies and programs specifically catered to their needs.
Contact the Department of Health to see if your government collects data about HIV that can be disaggregated. If they do not, begin an advocacy campaign to push for data disaggregation, so we can better understand how HIV is affecting young people in YOUR country.
Try to find ways to make your input into the development of proposals for the Global Fund and other funding organizations that are providing funds for HIV programmes. Advocate for a focus on young people and for support for interventions that are evidence informed.