“a university, a health department, and a pharmaceutical company walk into a health clinic…”: A successful public-private partnership

Public health practitioners often struggle with how to deliver communications about HIV and STD testing to those who are at the highest risk. One approach is to disseminate health communications about testing when audiences are most receptive to these messages. New research shows that sending weekly messages on Mondays may be an ideal frequency to motivate people to start and maintain healthy testing behaviors. By leveraging the natural tendency to focus on health behaviors at the beginning of the week, sexual health programs can boost participation levels and contribute to establishing habitual thinking about sexual health. Building on this idea, The Monday Campaigns created “Man Up Monday,” a creative campaign that sends a sex-positive message to young men, encouraging them to use Monday as the day they think about their sexual health choices, get tested for STDs, and restock their condoms. For Murray State University in Kentucky, the lack of HIV testing on campus created a barrier for implementing Man Up Monday and improving testing rates in their community. This session describes how The Monday Campaigns facilitated a successful collaboration among public and private agencies, including county and state health departments and a pharmaceutical company, to bring Man Up Monday, complete with rapid-HIV testing, to Murray State. This session describes the success story of Man Up Monday at Murray State and additionally, demonstrates how other organizations can leverage diverse partnerships as well as the “Monday Effect” to successfully disseminate health communications and improve programmatic outcomes in their communities.