Engaging African American Teens in Designing and Co-creating HIV Prevention Videos Using YouTube

Background: African American teens experience elevated risk for HIV compared to Whites, and should be included in designing culturally relevant prevention efforts. We developed and pilot tested a participatory method to engage African American teens in co-creating HIV prevention videos using YouTube, a popular video sharing social media website.

Program Framework and Implementation:. Our program curriculum emphasized HIV education, use of social media, and video production, and involved working with African American teens to foster ownership in designing and producing HIV prevention videos through YouTube. We partnered with the Boston Area Health Education Center to conduct two sequential pilot evaluations of this program in 2013 and 2014. Through an iterative process, we collected feedback from participants and community partners to assess program feasibility, acceptability, and to refine the curriculum.

Outcomes: We enrolled 19 teens, ages 16-18 (8 in the first pilot and 11 in the second pilot). Participating teens worked together to create three HIV prevention videos. Overall, teens reported high satisfaction with the program content and enjoyed using YouTube to co-create health communication messages. The program emerged as highly feasible, and something the community center would like to continue to deliver.

Conclusions: This program required few resources and used social media to appeal to today’s youth, highlighting that it could be delivered across diverse community settings. This participatory approach appears to empower youth, which is particularly important for advancing HIV prevention efforts among at-risk African American teens. The impact of this approach on health behaviors must be explored.