Community in Action: ENZO, Your HIV Combination Prevention expert

written by Diego Rozul

Safe Spaces PH launches a new way to access peer-led sexual health information. Meet Enzo, your friendly sexual health chatbot. Prepared with quips, gifs, and tips, Enzo has got you covered in preventing HIV transmission (m.me/safespacesph).

“We wanted to make Safe Spaces PH a gateway for information and access to HIV Combination Prevention methods, and since we are often on our social media, we went for a chatbot for people to easier navigate and access the information that they need, instead of searching for specific posts,” said Chatbot Developer Paul Junio.

Peer-level information sharing is still an integral part of how people access information. We sometimes find ourselves looking towards them in verifying what we’ve learned from our internet search. This may be through our friends, community leaders, or even your trusted community based organizations. While the current pandemic protocols limit the reach of traditional peer educators, Enzo was made to bridge the gap.

“Matching the programmatic part, medical facts, and the relatable tone of messaging was definitely a challenge,” told Junio. When Enzo was conceptualized, one of the top priorities was giving him a personality. Unlike other automated messaging systems, the Safe Spaces PH team wanted to make the user experience as close to how you’d talk to a friend as possible. A conversational tone mixed in with fun gifs, videos, and credible information.

Enzo also customizes its responses based on your given demographics and need. With a few simple questions, Enzo can recommend courses of action that are best for you. So whether you’re a man having sex with men who is living with HIV, a transgender woman, or cisgender heterosexual, Enzo knows what is just right for you, and gives you a directory of where to access these services.

Launched as part of the National HIV Prevention Month celebration, Enzo is available on Facebook Messenger under the Safe Spaces PH page.

If all goes well with his pilot run, we may be seeing him on other platforms as well. Translations into Tagalog and Cebuano are also in development, and the team is more than willing to make Enzo accessible in other Philippine languages. To collaborate, send an email to info@loveyourself.ph.