ABSTRACT
From the time it was determined that AIDS was communicable through intimate sexual contact, the principal public health strategy for limiting the spread of the disease has been education—to disseminate information concerning the sexual practices implicated in transmitting the AIDS virus (HIV). Campaigns to reach people at highest risk for AIDS—homosexual men, IV drug users, and sexual partners of high-risk individuals—have included brochures, one-to-one counseling, mass-media advertising campaigns, and public lectures. Many of the strategies designed to persuade those at high risk to adopt safer-sex practices were based on conceptual models of the factors associated with the adoption of preventive health practices, such as the Health Belief Model (HBM; Leventhal, Meyer, & Nerenz, 1980; Leventhal, Safer, & Panagis, 1983), the Fear-Drive Model (Leventhal et al., 1983), and the Dual-Process Model (Leventhal et al., 1983).
