State Aims New AIDS Education Campaign at 3 Groups

The state will launch a $1.7-million AIDS education campaign this fall targeting teen-agers, intravenous drug users and minorities, California’s top health official said Tuesday.

With radio and television announcements and one-on-one, in-the-street counseling with high-risk individuals, the 22-month program will reach segments of the population in dire need of preventive information, said Kenneth W. Kizer, director of the Department of Health Services.

“In the absence of a vaccine or a definite cure, our primary tool has been education,” Kizer said at a news conference Tuesday at County/USC Medical Center.

California has thus far spent more money--$22 million--than the other 49 states combined on AIDS education programs, Kizer said. However, most of those funds were divided among nearly 200 individual programs; the program announced Tuesday would be the first state-coordinated education effort.

Barbara Walker, a health educator at the Los Angeles Minority AIDS Project, welcomed the new effort. “There is a lack of culturally sensitive materials in those communities,” she said, but added that state officials could have acted more swiftly. “People are dying while they are researching.”

Education of children--both in schools and in the streets--will also be emphasized, Kizer said. There are an estimated 10,000 street children--runaways and teen-age prostitutes--in Los Angeles County whom experts say are at the greatest risk of becoming infected with the human immunodeficiency virus because of frequent, unprotected sex and intravenous drug use.

The state will work with local AIDS organizations to formulate programs that address the educational needs of individual communities, Kizer said. “Anyone who has worked in the area of AIDS education understands that what you may do in San Francisco may be successful, but not in Fresno” or other cities, he said.

Kizer said two Los Angeles firms, Ogilvy & Mather Public Relations/West and Pacificon, have been commissioned by the state to design materials that will be used in the campaign.

In California, 14,971 people have been diagnosed with the AIDS virus since January, 1981, with more than a third of those cases reported in Los Angeles County, according to Department of Health Services records. As of the end of June, some 8,669 people had died, officials said.