Using Mass Media Campaigns to Promote Voluntary Counseling and HIV Testing Services in Kenya

Kenya has rapidly scaled up its voluntary HIV counseling and testing (VCT) services, from three sites in 2000 to 585 by June 2005. Beginning in 2002, these services were promoted by a four-phase, professionally designed mass media campaign. In the current study, the authors sought to assess the impact of this campaign on VCT services.

A total of 381,160 client records from 131 sites were analyzed. The researchers observed a linear increase in new sites and an exponential increase in client utilization. Regression analysis showed that the first phase of the campaign boosted attendance by 28.5 percent (95 percent confidence interval [CI]=15.9, 42.5 percent) and the fourth by 42.5 percent (95 percent CI=28.4, 64.1 percent). These two phases, which directly mentioned HIV, had a greater impact on utilization than the second and third phase, which did not have a significant effect.

"The Kenyan experience suggests that a professional, intensive mass media campaign is likely to contribute to increases in utilization of testing. Expansion of programs for counseling and HIV testing in developing countries is likely to be facilitated by mass media promotion of these services," the authors concluded.

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