Attitudes and behaviours of people living with HIV/AIDS and mass media prevention campaign: A French survey

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the effect of French mass media national prevention campaigns on attitudes and behaviours of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs), with a special emphasis on HIV-related sexual risk behaviours. In 2001, a face-to-face survey was conducted in 32 hospital departments delivering HIV care randomly selected in two French regions (Paris metropolitan area and South-Eastern France). Eligible respondents were HIV-infected outpatients aged 18 or older, and diagnosed for at least 1 year. Overall, 1386 patients were asked to participate and 900 agreed to answer the questionnaire (response rate: 64.9%). Most respondents supported national AIDS information media campaigns; some have found support from these campaigns to talk to relatives or friends about AIDS (19.7%), or to manage their sexual life (24.5%). In multivariate analysis, PLWHAs who declared that these media campaigns have helped them to manage their sexual life were more likely to report condom use in the prior 6 months (“sometimes” vs. “never”: OR = 2.77 [95% CI = 1.15 – 6.71]; “always” vs. “never”: 2.46 [1.14 – 5.29]). So mass media general information campaigns can play an efficient role for secondary prevention among PLWHAs and may need to be redesigned to include this goal more explicitly.

Keywords:

• HIV-infected people
• mass media campaign
• risk behaviour
• secondary prevention

Acknowledgements

The authors want to acknowledge all the patients who participated in the study and the physicians and hospital staff for their help and comprehension. This research was supported by the French Commissariat Général du Plan.