HIV Stops With Me, an advertising campaign designed specifically to target those already positive, comes to San Diego. First launched in San Francisco four years ago to increase HIV awareness, the HIV Stops With Me pilot campaign was designed by A Better World Advertising in a joint venture with the Department of Public Health in San Francisco using funding from the Centers for Disease Control.

“We’re a social marketing company and that’s all we do, prevention campaigns and we work exclusively with nonprofit groups, health departments and community groups,” said Les Pappas, president of A Better World Advertising. “We specialize in HIV prevention but we do some other projects on tobacco awareness and other STDs. We create these awareness or prevention campaigns around the country.”

The campaign was designed to specifically target people who are HIV positive with a prevention message and, thanks to its success, the campaign has been replicated in seven different cities across the country. The campaign uses real people who are living with HIV and AIDS telling their own stories. In addition to print advertising, there is an online component of the campaign that provides an in-depth look into the lives of the spokesmodels, who are chosen to represent target groups in their individual cities.

“Typically that tends to be driven by a certain extent by the funding,” Pappas said, talking about the selection of spokesmodels for the campaign, adding that some cities only target gay and bisexual men. Others have funding for transgender people. Typically it depends on the risk groups in a certain city and how funding is being allocated.

“In San Diego we have an interesting arrangement,” Pappas said. “The funding is from the county, but we actually have two community partners. One being Family Health Centers and their funding is targeting gay and bisexual men who are HIV positive. The San Yisidro Health Clinic is also part of the campaign and their funding is targeting heterosexual women.”

In San Diego, the HIV Stops With Me campaign promotes responsibility and self-esteem in messages carried by the real voices of people living with the virus.

Four volunteer spokesmodels have been selected from the communities most impacted by HIV in San Diego. Dan talks about recovery and the need to take personal responsibility; Ramon discusses using condoms to protect his partner; Angela focuses her discussion on being there for her children; and Chris talks about the importance of protecting both his and his partner’s health and their relationship.

“It takes a degree of bravery and courage to publicly say I have HIV and I’m not going to infect anyone,” said Felipe Garcia, programs manager of HIV Prevention Services for Family Health Centers of San Diego, one of the two organizations managing the campaign with funding from the San Diego Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of AIDS Coordination funding.

“I have learned how to esteem myself by taking responsibility for my actions,” says Chris, one of the HIV-positive models for the San Diego campaign.

As the campaign evolves and additional funding is allocated, more HIV-positive groups will be represented in the advertising efforts. The campaign has been endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control, and formal evaluations have shown that the campaign has been successful in increasing personal responsibility among HIV-positive individuals to not infect others by modeling safer sex behaviors and attitudes. Health officials in San Francisco have stated that HIV infections have leveled off and may actually be declining, crediting the media campaign as a factor in this decline.