Increasing HIV Awareness in Youth

One of the goals of the APP Program is to provide vulnerable youth with STI and HIV/AIDS prevention education. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , youth ages 13 to 24 account for more than 1 in 5 of all new HIV cases; and more than half of youth living with HIV don’t know they have it. FYSB encourages PREP grantees to become familiar with the HHS Office of Adolescent Health’s Adolescent HIV/AIDS Prevention National Resource Center , which provides innovative content to empower youth-serving providers and peer leaders to meet the needs of youth at highest risk for HIV/AIDS.

The Resource Center consists of the What Works in Youth HIV website , featuring evidence-based interventions, prevention strategies, ways to convey HIV education information in a youth-friendly way, and social media and marketing strategies.

Have you ever heard of Periscope? The social media section of the What Works in Youth HIV website offers youth workers a primer on this platform as well as Snapchat, YikYak, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The What Works team offers youth workers a range of capacity-building opportunities — such as helping a program adapt an evidence-based or promising practices intervention to its community context — and provides technical assistance (TA) on how to use digital tools to reach youth.

What Works staff members can provide one-on-one virtual TA consultations and distance-based learning opportunities including webinars, Twitter chats, conference calls, and videos.