Peer Influencer Workshop
To follow up on the success of the pilot, a “Peer Influencer Workshop” was held in March 2019, with support from the Aerosmith Fund for Prevention and Treatment of AIDS and HIV, Boston Children’s Hospital, a Rose Service Learning Fellowship at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation of San Francisco, California.
This workshop, held in cooperation with the Zambian Ministry of Health and the Zambian Medical Association, invited 10 of the top Zambian pop singers, with a collective social media following of more than 1 million youth, to be trained as “Super Peers.” The goal of the workshop was to inspire the artists to reach out to youth with important information and stories that will directly impact youth choices regarding HIV, and to teach the artists proven public health communication techniques to incorporate into their music.
The workshop participants are multi-award winning, internationally recognized artists who represent some of the best and most popular musicians in Zambia today. Collectively, they have won awards from all of the major entertainment award shows in Zambia (as well as across Southern and Eastern Africa) including multiple Best Artist, Best Song, and Best Album awards from Sun FM’s Kwacha Music Awards and the Zambia Music Awards (ZMA). These artists have top hits, can fill stadium concerts, and are brand ambassadors to major companies including Coca Cola and MTN. Through the “Peer Influencer” Workshop, they all agreed to be “Super Peers” and committed to waking Zambians up to HIV.” Their influence and talent make them a powerful vehicle for carrying this public health message to a new generation of youth who know and love these artists and their music.
In addition to creating a group of Zambian musicians trained in public health messaging techniques, the primary output from this workshop was an eleven-song album. The title track is a group song “entitled “Ukani Manje,” which tells Zambian youth to “Wake Up” to HIV, and raises awareness that HIV is still a relevant and important issue. In addition, each artist has written and recorded an individual song utilizing public health communication techniques and up-to-date facts and figures about HIV in Zambia that they learned during the workshop. The individual songs each focus on a HIV-related sub-problem that fits the brand and style of the individual artists and includes a call to action for youth. For example, one artist sings about the benefits of abstaining from sex, another talks about using a condom, and another talks about stigma. The songs are united under the overarching call to action to “Wake Up” or “Ukani Manje,” through lyrics such as “Wake up, use a condom” or “Wake up, stop stigmatizing”. Unlike the pilot song “Worth More,” these songs are meant to be pop songs with an HIV message, not blatantly HIV- focused songs. They are designed to be top hits for radio play and distribution, and the artists are committed to promoting these songs in collaboration with Zambian public health experts and partners from the Ministry of Health, who will provide additional information for the youth who are inspired to protect themselves.