Soap opera lesson to fight AIDS and Screening political soaps

Soap opera lesson to fight AIDS

“Hey baby, you OK?” Mike asks his girlfriend as she sits down next to him. “Yeah, I’m OK,” Toni says, and she puts her head on his shoulder. Mike thinks it’s safe to move in for a kiss. “Slow down,” she says, pushing him back. “Just because I’ve decided to take you back, it doesn’t erase the fact that you cheated on me.” He looks away sheepishly. “Look, we’re going to be using condoms from now on,” Toni says. “And tomorrow, we’re getting tested. And that’s that.”

She kisses him, and Mike manages a little smile.

The scene is from a soap opera with a purpose: to use short videos to go beyond pamphlets on safe sex and deliver the message to women who might otherwise tune it out.

Nurse educator Rachel Jones developed the education campaign, using professional actors and scripts based on focus groups with women in Newark and Jersey City. Mike and Toni and the “other woman”, Valerie, are in a pilot video available online.

“Women who watched the first pilot were getting upset, angry, exacerbated,” said Jones, who teaches at Rutgers University’s College of Nursing in Newark. 

“Women really saw themselves in that video. We’re really resonating with urban contemporary themes that we believe are relevant to women.”

Jones filmed a series of 12 soap opera vignettes with a Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey grant, and recently received a $2 million National Institutes of Health grant to test the campaign’s effectiveness.

Women in the federal study will watch the 20-minute episodes on their cell phones. Their risk-reduction behavior will be measured against a control group that will receive text messages urging condom use, but no video. A total of 250 women will participate. 

“What we believe will happen is that knowledge alone is not effective at changing behaviors,” Jones said. 

“We believe that women in the community will so identify with heroines in the story their own behaviors will change as well.”

The scripts feature “nitty gritty stories of risk and risk reduction” that women can identify with, she said, adding that cell phone viewing ensures privacy and offers the viewer the chance to watch again and again as desired. 

Jones has dedicated her career to reducing HIV/AIDS among young, urban black and Latina women, who are being infected at an epidemic rate. Some 82 percent of the infections affecting 18- to 29-year-olds are transmitted through heterosexual sex with an HIV-infected partner, she said.

“It is astounding, it is a completely preventable infection,” said Jones. “In New Jersey, we have the highest proportion of women living with AIDS in the United States.” Jones said she thought she had spent enough years working in urban health settings to be able to explain why young female patients engaged in unprotected sex despite the known risks, but that even she was surprised when she started looking for ways to change their behavior while earning a doctorate as a family nurse practitioner. 

“I had very bright, wonderful patients who would come to me again and again with sexually transmitted infections,” she said. 

She said the women understood that they were being exposed to HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, but engaged in unprotected sex anyway; even those who knew they weren’t in monogamous relationships didn’t insist their partners wear condoms.

“We have to normalize condom use,” she said.

Jones said women experience pressure to have unprotected sex and that their partners often consider insistence on using a condom as sign of distrust. 

“These relationship concerns can feel much more important in the moment for some women than reducing HIV/AIDS, which can feel more distant,” she said. 

At the end of the study, all the participants will get a DVD with all the soap opera videos, she said. The videos will also be available on the Web. 

“If we know we’re effective, we’re going to dedicate ourselves to getting them out,” Jones said. 

On the Web: 
Pilot video:
www.stophiv.newark.rutgers.edu; Source: Angela Delli Santi , The Associated Press , Trenton, New Jersey | Wed, 01/07/2009 4:38 PM | Life 

Screening political soaps

If life is show business, then politics is a soap opera with twists and turns as well as climaxes and anti-climaxes found in Greek tragedies. The only difference is all scenes and chapters are reality and directly affect our well-being. And those politicians are not actors or actresses, but our representatives whose interests should represent ours. 

In the United States, Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin bring their life stories to voters through media coverage, online media and biographies. American voters have been exposed to their lives 24/7 and we all seem to be interested to find out who has done what, why they made certain decisions, and how their professional, personal choices and character will affect their tenure if they are elected. Above all, voters are inclined to take such information seriously, if not to heart, as reassurance. 

In Indonesia, voters have started to see appearances of presidential candidates. A while ago, former governor of Jakarta Sutiyoso "Bang Yos" visited San Francisco and shared his decision to run for presidential candidacy in 2009. 

The audience, the San Francisco-based Indonesian community, asked numerous questions, hoping to find out more about "the man who rarely smiles". They wanted to know as much as they could to be better informed prior to making the decision to vote for him or not. 

After all, a public individual is a legend until he or she breaks the ice. 

Indonesian politicians, however, seem to see voters within a particular collective cohort. This means they do not aim to impress individuals, rather groups of individuals, or a specific demography. It also seems that Indonesian voters are not aware of the different hues of possible implementations of a particular issue. 

Those with strong public presences and public relations within the customary culture are likely to attract more attention and more votes. Some political parties aiming for the majority of voters, which typically possess mediocre intellectual exposure, are religious and financially restricted, use grassroot activities as a way to spread their messages and crystallizing their political maneuvers without looking like doing so. 

In Indonesia, voters who belong to the lower part of the population pyramid, the majority, are likely to be influenced by sympathetic and charitable deeds, thanks to a patriarchal society. Those who belong to the top part of the pyramid are likely to be more critical and demanding in a much more intelligent way. Thus, well-delivered thoughts and arguments are likely to be used more generously, while grassroot deeds are likely to be husbanded. 

In Indonesia, politicians try to win voters' hearts. In the United States, politicians try to win voters' minds and hearts. 

In the United States, influences to vote or not to vote for a particular candidate primarily come from the media. Perceptions are twisted and attenuated depending on campaign objectives, which are intended to bring an augury for a particular candidate. 

Barack Obama is the rock star inspirator, John McCain is the original maverick, Joe Biden is the promise keeper, and Sarah Palin is the hockey mom and a pitbull in lipstick. All sound original and such identification is both a tagline and a positioning statement to bring voters closer. 

Many people are touched by Obama's charismatic change-oriented rhetorics that comes from his international and multicultural upbringing and exposure to Ivy League education. Others might be more inclined to listen to McCain's strong patriotic messages, which come from his experience as a prisoner of war. 

Those whose life philosophy revolves around world justice and poverty eradication are likely to be mesmerized by the dedications of former Mrs. Obama, Barack's mother. On the contrary, those who believe in the power of wealth in amassing political influences are likely to be impressed by McCain's marriage to a super rich woman as his second and current wife. 

Many others might be touched by Biden's past life in which he lost his first wife and daughter in a fatal car accident, causing him to decide to stay at home with his two surviving small sons. When he finally remarried a smart and caring lady, who is both a teacher with a doctorate in education and an activist, the viewers of his short TV biography finally felt relieved. 

Certain feelings were also invoked when voters found out that Palin, the small town beauty pageant winner, got elected as Wasilla mayor by age 32, gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome and has a teenage daughter who is pregnant out of wedlock. 

The world is a gigantic web of stories so intertwined with one another that it is often hard to sort out which one comes with useful information that is likely to be ingrained in our perception, which eventually trigger that decision to vote or not to vote. 

The writer is an author and columnist based in Northern California. She is writing a book on compassion. Source: Jennie S. Bev , San Francisco | Thu, 10/09/2008 10:32 AM | Opinion