Black Public Health Influencer
Funder
ViiV Healthcare
Funding Duration
October 2024 – October 2027
Principal Investigator
Project Leads / Primary Contacts
Description
The Black Public Health Influencers (BPHI) is a project of ETR that seeks to elevate the voices of young Black students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Through fellowship, BPHI Fellows become educators and advocates for sexual health and wellness of their communities and peers by utilizing social media campaigns. This is an effective tool for diffusing information and influencing health-promoting behaviors and attitudes among youth and communities.
Historical trauma, discrimination, lack of representation, and misinformation in healthcare have created barriers to accessing essential information regarding sexual well-being and resources. Our work with previous BPHI Fellows revealed emerging opportunities for building stronger connections with fellows’ HBCU communities and the potential for increasing the scalability, sustainability, and impact of the BPHI program.
Through greater engagement with HBCU communities, we will create more meaningful relationships that support recruitment and retention of our fellows, contribute feedback to the BPHI curriculum and project, and help us explore potential interest and capacity of HBCUs to adapt and replicate a version of BPHI in the future.
Through this new funding cycle and building on our past successes and lessons learned, BPHI will do the following:
- Empower students from HBCUs to take an active role in educating their communities about HIV and sexual health issues affecting Black communities using social media as a key platform.
- Advance the leadership and capacity of young Black HBCU students by building transferable professional and life skills that can be applied beyond the BPHI fellowship.
- Create a supportive network of young, emerging influencers attending HBCUs and mentors with expertise in media, communication, health equity, and health education.
- Explore HBCUs as potential hubs for replicating BPHI or other peer health education programs focused on innovative approaches to health education and HIV prevention and support.
