There’s a definite and urgent need to adapt our HIV prevention strategy to reflect the needs and styles of adolescents and young adults. This is clear from the 9 year history of increasing newly diagnosed HIV cases among young men who have sex with men (YMSM), including the 83% increase in the last year.

I think one of the major adaptations is going to be moving towards user generated prevention. This is beneficial for three reasons: the population is most adept at communicating with each other (i.e., 16 year olds speak “teenager” better than most 40 year olds), there’s an innate prevention activity in developing the message, and these types of media campaigns can be dirt cheap.

There are a couple of agencies that are already doing this. The Minnesota Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy, Prevention & Parenting is having a video contest (PDF) regarding general adolescent health. MTV and funny or die recently had a crazy sex advice contest called Say What. The Minnesota AIDS Project/Pride Alive is collecting 10,000 messages, and trying to distribute them to 1,000,000 people. And, of course, Hennepin County and MDH are moving forward on a video contest (it technically ended, but stay tuned for a few announcements).

I think this is the right way to move. We’ve been living in a Web 2.0 world for half a decade, and we’re all getting used to sharing everything we’re thinking and telling other people what we think about what they’re thinking (this would be a good time to encourage you to follow me on twitter…). So, it seems logical that young adults should want to have input into what messages they think are appropriate, and what HIV prevention strategies they think are reasonable.

So, since these contests seem to be a good idea, I want to ensure we’re doing this appropriately… it sometimes feels like these contests are being run by people that aren’t familiar with technology or social media. Submissions should be made online — having to email someone is just annoying. Ideally, a website should post submissions for ranking and comments by other users, as this would fully capitalize on the potential of internet technologies. Campaigns need to be appropriately incentivized; just because YouTube is free, doesn’t mean a $20 gift card is sufficient. Don’t be too restrictive or too quick to censor. The most effective messages may make you squirm:

So despite my few critiques, I’m hopeful this style of health promotion is effective and am excited about what kinds of messages will be generated!