Communicating the Call to Action for HIV Testing: CDC-INFO

Testing for HIV is a major HIV prevention strategy. But at-risk audiences face many barriers to testing, both internal and external. Two major barriers are not knowing the location of HIV testing centers and not wanting to ask a family/friend to help locate a clinic. Speed of information about testing center location is critical to follow through behavior.

CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention program is working closely with CDC's Contact Center (CDC INFO) to provide rapid HIV testing site information to callers who ask HIV related questions. CDC-INFO provides information and facilitates HIV testing behaviors by helping callers locate the closest HIV testing clinic. By helping callers locate the closest testing clinic, CDC-INFO agents are enabling the callers' positive behavior and removing a small, but important place barrier to action.

As a specific marketing communication tool, CDC-INFO has a continuous evaluation loop - feeding information from the system to CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP) staff for program improvement consideration. The technology of CDC- INFO's system offered a cost-effective opportunity to identify information that could have been hampering planned marketing efforts. The CDC-INFO and DHAP staff agreed to undertake ongoing monitoring of the HIV calls to CDC-INFO to help identify information gaps, customer service issues, and information revisions or other updates needed in order to facilitate callers' HIV prevention behaviors, primarily HIV testing. The presentation will discuss the monitoring system developed, and the resulting impact on communicating HIV testing sites when appropriate.