Medical Education Information

An Interactive Multimedia Approach
to AIDS Education for Adolescents

In the absence of a timely cure or vaccine for AIDS, education remains the only effective means of prevention. Previous educational approaches have included conventional lectures, role playing and counseling. More high tech approaches have had minimal customized interactivity between the user and the computer that takes into account who the user is and what sexual and drug use habits they have.

We propose to educate adolescents and other high-risk groups in an interesting and individualized way using an interactive multimedia computer program. We utilize digitized full-screen video, animation, graphics and audio. Interactivity is integral to the program. After the user has entered their own personal sociodemographics and sexual profile, the computer program will use that data to feed back appropriate, customized AIDS risk information for that user. The user will be able to quickly determine how hypothetically changing their behavior also changes their risk. They will see the personal, social and financial consequences of their behavior.

Telecommunication technology will be incorporated into the project by modem connection to Dr. Avrum Bluming's Los Angeles FreeNet and our web page on the World Wide Web. There will be an exercise where the user will be in charge of eradicating AIDS from a hypothetical country. As the "AIDS Czar", the user will see the ramifications of each decision made. For example, if the decision was made to mandate testing for pregnant women, then a video showing an outraged spokesperson for NOW will appear, the amount of money needed to accomplish this will be deducted from the budget, and the number of new AIDS cases that occurred during the time to implement this action will be shown.

We believe that personalizing risk together with dramatic video/animation tutorials, original music (written by Jay Gruska) and a storyline may prove more effective in modifying behavior than previous methods. We hope to also identify subgroups that would benefit the most from further skills-based education. To further evaluate our educational tool, we hope to test it in a randomized, controlled manner, under the direction of our adolescent psychology consultant, Karen Calfas of San Diego State University.

The interactive video portion of the project has been filmed and is also available as two separate linear video teaching tools entitled Smart Sex: How to Protect Yourself in the Age of AIDS (a scripted video about two teenagers and their decision to have sex) and Teens Talk: How to Protect Yourself in the Age of AIDS (testimonials from teenagers). Each video is about 20 minutes long. The prestigious Harvard-Westlake School and Culver City High School have used the videos in their human development classes with great success, and the videos have recently been approved by the Los Angeles Unified School District for distribution to their teachers. We hope that the project will be useful to schools, physician's offices, AIDS and STD Clinics, libraries, dating services, Police Departments, adolescent correctional institutions, home health companies, churches and synagogues.

Funding for the project has been provided by the UCLA AIDS Institute, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Bayer, Health Infusion, and The Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California (USC). The project has been featured on Fox Channel 9 News in Los Angeles and has been presented with great success to Kristine Gebbie, President Clinton's former AIDS Policy Coordinator. Additional funding is being sought.