The PrEP4Teens campaign, partially funded by the TC CFAR, was awarded the Alliance for Research in Chicagoland Communities (ARCC) 2025 Dr. Virginia Bishop Community-Academic Research Partnership Award. One of the campaign’s cofounders is Kathryn Macapagal, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University and a co-director of the TC CFAR’s Developmental Core.

ARCC, a program of the Center for Community Health at Northwestern University, established the Community-Academic Research Partnership Award to recognize exemplary partnerships that use a community-driven research approach to impact community health in Chicagoland.

The 2025 award honors the PrEP4Teens partnership between Northwestern University, led by Macapagal; TaskForce Prevention and Community Services, led by Chris Balthazar, PhD, executive director, and a member of the TC CFAR’s Community Collaboration Board; and Jim Pickett Consulting, led by longtime HIV prevention advocate Jim Pickett.

“PrEP4Teens would not exist without a community-academic partnership,” said Macapagal. “Our common grounding in creativity and arts as tools for public health advocacy brought an incredibly diverse coalition of youth, researchers, and community organizations together and made our initiative more impactful.”

PrEP4Teens stems from research that identified lack of understanding and awareness as the main barriers for teenagers to start taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). PrEP are FDA-approved medications for adolescents and adults that reduce an individual’s chance of getting HIV by as much as 99%. However, adolescents only make up a small percentage of those who are prescribed PrEP. 

Launched in November 2023, PrEP4Teens is an arts and advocacy-focused multimedia social marketing campaign aimed at increasing awareness about PrEP and sexual health for adolescents in the Chicago area. PrEP4Teens features murals, including at the Village at the University of Chicago, TaskForce and Lurie Children’s outpatient adolescent health clinic, and other types of public art created collaboratively by muralists and Chicago youth.

Another key component of the campaign is a teen-friendly informational website, in English and Spanish, that explains PrEP and points to PrEP providers in the Chicago area who serve youth.

“We’ve been delighted that PrEP4Teens is making a positive impact on the lives of Chicago youth and are grateful to our partners, funders, and ARCC for this huge honor,” said Macapagal.

PrEP4Teens resources were distributed at the 2024 Chicago Pride Fest, the 2024 Illinois PrEP Summit, the 2024 Chicago Public Schools’ Galaxy Summit, and additional community events. The campaign has been featured by WBEZ Chicago, POZ magazine and other notable media outlets.

The award recipients will be honored at ARCCs’ Community Research Learning Exchange on March 20, 2025, at 12-4 pm in McKinley Park. Register to attend the Learning Exchange.