GYT: Adapting a National STD Testing Campaign for a Local Audience in Santa Clara County, California

Background: One in two sexually active people will get a sexually transmitted diseases (STD) by age 25. The sooner people know they have an STD, the sooner they can seek treatment and take measures to protect themselves and their partners. For STD Awareness Month in April 2013, California’s Santa Clara County Public Health Department (PHD) adapted “Get Yourself Tested” (GYT), a national, youth‐focused, STD testing campaign developed by CDC, MTV, Kaiser Family Foundation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and other partners. The purpose of GYT is to encourage youth to get tested for STDs.

Methods: JSI conducted formative research to determine appropriate communication channels for reaching youth and adapted existing GYT outdoor advertising, PSAs (radio and movie theaters), and printed materials. Novel campaign materials included Pandora Internet radio ads, Facebook ads, and radio PSAs. JSI and PHD distributed approximately 150 toolkits to community organizations that included posters, fliers, postcards, palm cards, and buttons.

Results: PHD and JSI tracked the distribution and placement of GYT materials, social media metrics, and web analytics. JSI conducted 100 intercept surveys with youth in the County. Twenty three percent of eligible intercept survey respondents had heard of GYT and of those 19% (n=4)  said they got tested as a result of seeing the ad. HIVtest.org saw a 200% increase in STD-related searches using the Santa Clara County ZIP codes in April 2013 compared with April 2012.The GYT Pandora ad’s click‐through rate of 2.39% was double the average rate of other Pandora ads.

Conclusions: By leveraging and adapting a national campaign, the County reached youth with messages about STD testing and direct its limited resources to campaign dissemination, rather than development. Across communication channels, we estimate the total reach of GYT in the County at over 30 million impressions.