A Qualitative Analysis of the Entertainment-Education Campaign “Girlsplained”

Sexual health encompasses a variety of physical, mental, and social topics which influence public health. An understanding of education methods on these topics is exceedingly important, especially for marginalized communities that have disproportionately worse sexual health outcomes. This proposed study evaluates Girlsplained, an entertainment-education (EE) campaign launched to address sexual health in minority women in the UK. This project involved qualitative methods guided by directed content analysis to code and analyze publicly available YouTube and Instagram comments on the Girlsplained webpages to explore the shared characteristics and experiences of individuals who engaged with the campaign online. Qualitative analyses revealed five primary themes: engagement with characters and the narrative, engagement with social media, engagement with gender and race, engagement with HIV/PrEP, and engagement with sex and pregnancy prevention. Our results provide important insight about short-form EE interventions that will impact future public health campaigns related to sexual and reproductive health, ultimately achieving better outcomes