California: Nonprofit Using Young Faces for HIV/AIDS Awareness

A new HIV/AIDS awareness campaign in Palm Springs directly tackles youths' mistaken belief that they can identify people with HIV by sight.

In posters placed in 40 public buses, young, attractive Latino models are juxtaposed against the warning: "You can't tell if someone has HIV/AIDS by just looking at them. Protect yourself." Another is even more blunt. In it, an attractive young woman says, "I have AIDS."

The message for the campaign was inspired by youths in a focus group who told campaign organizers that they would not sleep with someone who "looked like" they had AIDS.

"Quite frankly, that was one of the most disturbing things to me," said Blake Holiday, a publicist with O'Bayley Communications, the public relations firm that carried out the campaign.

The effort is funded by a $6,500 grant from the Desert Regional Medical Center Auxiliary and developed by Working Wonders, which assists families and children affected by HIV.

"We did it to convey the message that it doesn't matter what people look like, you still need to protect yourself," Working Wonders founder Evelyn Hernandez Valentino said. "Teenagers are used to seeing other populations being highlighted in these campaigns, and they are not used to seeing teenagers that look like them and that are very attractive," she said.

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