The PrEPárate: PrEP for You and Me and PrEP4Teens campaigns received second and third place PrEPpy Awards, respectively, at the Biomedical HIV Prevention Summit in April 2025. The award recognizes PrEPárate and PrEP4Teens for their engaging community-centered marketing campaigns and commitment to making HIV prevention more approachable and empowering. Both campaigns are partially funded by Third Coast Center for AIDS Research (CFAR).
NMAC, formerly known as the National Minority AIDS Council, created the PrEPpy Awards to honor the organizations, health departments, and agencies that reach key communities with culturally relevant, accessible, and innovative messaging promoting pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and information about HIV prevention. The award emphasizes campaigns that feature community members and use inclusive language.
“This prestigious recognition from NMAC signifies the profound impact and national validation of PrEPárate as a community-driven, culturally congruent public health intervention,” said Pedro Serrano, MPH, CPH, a co-primary investigator on the project and co-founder of the community partner CQL Collaborative. “Our success with PrEPárate demonstrates that empowering community members as leaders and financially supporting their engagement is fundamental to developing effective and equitable public health solutions.”
PrEPárate emerged through research by the CQL Collaborative and Illinois PrEP Working Group that demonstrated growing gaps in HIV prevention and care among Latino communities in Cook County, Illinois. To increase PrEP uptake and ultimately reduce these gaps, the PrEPárate social marketing campaign developed and disseminated culturally tailored resources among Latino communities in the Chicagoland area, which was funded by a Third Coast CFAR Ending the HIV Epidemic supplement, one of many funding mechanisms through the CFAR.
The campaign worked in close collaboration with the local community to create and refine materials, which included videos, social media posts, and advertisements providing culturally relevant information about PrEP and how to access it, as well as an informational website available in both Spanish and English. PrEPárate also hired local Latino artists, designers, social media influencers, and members of community-based organizations as PrEPárate Ambassadors – the faces of the campaign itself.
“Community-academic collaborations are essential for building local research capacity, ensuring that interventions are not only efficacious but also relevant and adaptable,” said Serrano.
Like PrEPárate, PrEP4Teens prioritized community engagement throughout the campaign’s development and implementation, but with a focus on increasing awareness of PrEP and sexual health for adolescents in the Chicago area.
“PrEP4Teens centers the wisdom and perspectives of young people in the community. Everything the project has done, is doing, and will do stems directly from the ideas and creativity of teens,” said Jim Pickett, who was a senior director of the community partner AIDS Foundation of Chicago at the time of the project. “No one is a better expert on community needs and desires than community members themselves.”
PrEP4Teens stems from research that identified a lack of understanding and awareness as major barriers preventing young people from starting PrEP. Through funding from a Third Coast CFAR Ending the HIV Epidemic supplement to support preliminary research and development, the campaign designed an arts and advocacy-focused approach to community mobilization with the goal of increasing PrEP uptake. The campaign delivers accurate, relevant, and meaningful information about PrEP to young people, focusing on youth between the ages of 13 and 17. Outputs from PrEP4Teens include public art created collaboratively by Chicago youth and muralists, and a teen-friendly website that shares PrEP resources in both English and Spanish.
“For any community that could benefit from PrEP, it is a must to engage with a wide array of individuals and stakeholders to develop culturally relevant, accessible, and innovative messaging. The PrEP4Teens team is delighted to have these efforts recognized by the PrEPpy Award,” said Pickett.
By prioritizing community engagement and buy-in from campaign conception through implementation, PrEPárate and PrEP4Teens demonstrate the importance and long-term impact of community-centered marketing campaigns.
“There is a critical need for sustained investment in community-academic partnerships,” Serrano said. “Empowering community members as leaders and financially supporting their engagement is fundamental to developing effective and equitable public health solutions.”
PrEPárate and PrEP4Teens were made possible with support from the Third Coast CFAR, an NIH-funded center (P30 AI117943). Third Coast CFAR funding for PrEPárate was awarded to Harita Shah, MD, and Pedro Serrano, MPH, CPH. Third Coast CFAR funding for PrEP4Teens was awarded to Kathryn Macapagal, PhD, and Jim Pickett.