Attitudes and behaviours of people living with HIV/AIDS and mass media prevention campaign: A French survey

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the effect of French mass media national prevention campaigns on attitudes and behaviours of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs), with a special emphasis on HIV-related sexual risk behaviours. In 2001, a face-to-face survey was conducted in 32 hospital departments delivering HIV care randomly selected in two French regions (Paris metropolitan area and South-Eastern France). Eligible respondents were HIV-infected outpatients aged 18 or older, and diagnosed for at least 1 year. Overall, 1386 patients were asked to participate and 900 agreed to answer the questionnaire (response rate: 64.9%). Most respondents supported national AIDS information media campaigns; some have found support from these campaigns to talk to relatives or friends about AIDS (19.7%), or to manage their sexual life (24.5%). In multivariate analysis, PLWHAs who declared that these media campaigns have helped them to manage their sexual life were more likely to report condom use in the prior 6 months (“sometimes” vs. “never”: OR = 2.77 [95% CI = 1.15 – 6.71]; “always” vs. “never”: 2.46 [1.14 – 5.29]). So mass media general information campaigns can play an efficient role for secondary prevention among PLWHAs and may need to be redesigned to include this goal more explicitly.