The findings and conclusions in these presentations have not been formally disseminated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and should not be construed to represent any agency determination or policy.

Tuesday, May 9, 2006 - 10:45 AM
48

Increasing POWER in the Western United States: Results from a randomized trial to promote female and male condoms

Charlene Ortiz and Sheana Bull. Colorado Health Outcomes Program, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, CO, USA


Background:
Although female condoms have been available since 1994, few people are aware of them, hold positive attitudes towards them, or actually use them for STD and pregnancy prevention.

Objective:
To determine the efficacy of using a social marketing campaign to promote awareness of, improve attitudes toward, and increase use of female or male condoms for combined STD/pregnancy prevention among Black and Latina women aged 15-25.

Method:
Using a time-space probability sampling method, we interviewed 3407 women in 12 neighborhoods to document knowledge of, attitudes toward and use of female as well as male condoms. We implemented the POWER social marketing campaign in 6 of the 12 neighborhoods, selected randomly. We completed a follow up assessment of knowledge, attitudes and condom use with an additional assessment of campaign exposure among 3007 women in all 12 neighborhoods.

Result:
Women exposed to the POWER campaign were significantly more likely to have seen a female condom than those not exposed (80% vs. 60%, p<0.01). Women exposed to POWER were also significantly more likely to have used both a female condom (24% vs. 10%, p<0.01) and a male condom (80% vs. 69%, p<0.05). We observed no differences in outcomes when comparing baseline to follow-up data or intervention to control communities.


Conclusion:
The POWER social marketing campaign can be a low-cost tool to raise awareness of and promote use of female as well as male condoms, broadening risk reduction options for women. Failure to document differences across communities and groups within the study may be due to low campaign saturation across intervention sites and contamination between control and intervention communities.

Implications:
Program planners can use social marketing techniques to convey information about STD prevention and researchers can consider using time-space sampling methods to target and recruit more robust samples for research with hard to identify/reach populations.