| Abstract: | This paper presents the lessons that were learned in technical assistance during the Preventive Marketing Initiative local site demonstration project in the US. The program has been ongoing for 5 years, with social marketers from the Academy for Educational Development and Porter Novelli using social marketing and behavioral science principles to develop HIV prevention programs for and with local teens. With the success of the program, community-based prevention programs are increasingly being requested since better outcomes resulted from a few dollars of investment. Likewise, funders and prevention researchers were challenged to transfer state-of-the-art prevention technologies for communities to apply it readily. The success achieved by the project, however, provides important lessons that would save time and money for future community-based Prevention Marketing efforts. Among the lessons were the need to seek out or establish conditions in the community that are conducive to success, as well as the need to offer technical assistance that would mobilize communities in developing more effective Prevention Marketing programs. |
