Countywide : Ads on AIDS Lack Impact, Doctor Says

Ads warning teen-agers about AIDS need to employ the same savvy used to sell cars and beer, a national AIDS expert said Wednesday.

Dr. Richard P. Keeling, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin and head of the university’s health service, criticized past efforts to educate young people about AIDS.

Keeling, addressing 600 people on the last day of a two-day AIDS conference at the Red Lion Hotel in Costa Mesa, said mass-media education efforts to promote safe sex among young people have failed because the messages have been delivered in a way that does not appeal to them.

“Although we are skilled at transferring information to people’s heads,” he said, “we have not enabled young people to change their behavior.”

The conflict comes, he said, when young people are told about the dangers of AIDS and unsafe sexual practices, yet are constantly bombarded with advertising messages that portray sex and alcohol as highly desirable.

“We have discouraged independent thought by undermining them with product marketing,” he said.

What needs to be done now is for educators and health officials to use the same powerful advertising techniques to promote safe sex among young people. He pointed out that the San Francisco gay community successfully used colorful ads during the 1980s to promote safe sex among gay men.

By contrast, he said, the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta created a lot of dry, clinical-oriented advertising that missed its mark. Keeling blamed the bland messages in the advertising on political influences that watered down the message.

“The CDC needs to stop listening to politicians and needs to start listening to the public,” Keeling said. He called the CDC’s materials “mindless” and “useless.”

Keeling said he is optimistic that the Clinton Administration will be more flexible so that some change can occur.

“Americans have a lot of confidence in education,” he said. “It’s hard for them to hear that education hasn’t stopped the spread of HIV. What it means is that a certain strategy isn’t working. That doesn’t mean another strategy won’t work.”

On a smaller scale, Keeling recommended that parents perform “little acts of leadership” to combat the low self-esteem in youths created by the advertising. “Go to the school board meetings, and the PTA,” he said, in an interview after his speech. “Go to the superintendent with clear expectations, work with youth groups.”

He also recommended that people stop buying the products of advertisers that use sexually explicit advertising, or advertising that glamorizes alcohol use. All of the messages are linked to one another and combine to promote unhealthy sexual practices in the age of AIDS, he said.