hivaidsStigma

Gay Men's Health Crisis

Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) is a not-for-profit, volunteer-supported, and community-based organization committed to national leadership in the fight against AIDS. GMHC's mission is to reduce the spread of HIV disease, help people with HIV maintain and improve their health and independence, and keep the prevention, treatment, and cure of HIV an urgent national and local priority.

With funding from AED, GMHC will develop Anti-Stigma Awareness Program (ASAP), an HIV/AIDS anti-stigma awareness campaign that involves community members in the creation and dissemination of social marketing campaigns in New York City. This consumer-produced social marketing campaign is designed to reduce stigma against men who have sex men (MSM) of color, HIV-positive MSM, and male-to-female transgender women. The primary goals of the campaign are 1) to raise awareness about the impact of stigma on the health of target communities and 2) to increase discourse among target communities and the general public about the negative effects of stigma.

The materials developed will be made available to other agencies for replication. The end product of the campaign will be a population-based model approach which will include recruitment, a training curriculum, workshops, focus groups, the development, production, and dissemination of campaign materials for each of the three target communities, and evaluation of the overall program. The objectives of the curriculum, as it relates to participants in the three target communities, are:

• To increase knowledge of stigma and how stigma affects communities and individuals;
• To increase awareness of how HIV/AIDS-related stigma can lead to higher rates of HIV transmission;
• To increase skills in the development of social marketing campaigns;
• To develop the concept for one social marketing campaign as a team; and
  
• To work with GMHC program staff to disseminate the campaign materials.