project
Último Año
The Challenge
Across Latin America, millions of young people face barriers to reproductive health information, gender equity, and inclusion. Cultural stigma around contraception, high rates of gender-based violence, and discrimination against people with disabilities create compounding challenges — particularly for 16- to 24-year-olds navigating relationships, education, and identity for the first time.
The Approach
Último Año was designed to meet young audiences where they already were: on MTV. PMC co-produced the series with MTV Latin America, training the Mexico-based creative team in PMC’s serial drama methodology and providing ongoing creative and technical input throughout production. The series aired one hour, five nights per week from September through December 2012, then rebroadcast in the U.S. on MTV’s Tr3s and in Mexico on Cadena 3, one of the country’s most popular free-to-air channels. MEXFAM, Mexico’s Planned Parenthood affiliate, provided a text and internet chat service connecting viewers directly with reproductive health resources.
By embedding health and social messaging into a format audiences chose to watch — not as lessons, but as the lived experiences of characters they came to know — PMC and MTV created a vehicle for behavior change at a scale traditional public health campaigns rarely achieve.
The Story
The series followed a group of young people navigating their final year of school — a universal turning point where decisions about relationships, health, identity, and future direction converge. Storylines explored contraception and reproductive choice, relationships affected by domestic violence, HIV/AIDS awareness and stigma reduction, disability inclusion and challenging discrimination, and the tension between education and early adulthood pressures.
The Impact
The results were striking. Viewers were significantly more likely than non-viewers to report using contraception (78% vs. 64%), to seek reproductive health information from a doctor (38% vs. 20%), and to express willingness to help people with disabilities facing discrimination (95% vs. 86%). The series also shifted attitudes around reproductive timing: 42% of viewers believed the ideal age for a first child is after 25, compared to just 26% of non-viewers.
And Último Año didn’t just deliver social impact — it delivered commercially. The series won multiple MTV awards, generated 324,000 website visits and 1.4 million page views in its first month, and became profitable for MTV Latin America within nine months. It proved that entertainment-education doesn’t require trade-offs: stories grounded in evidence can drive both cultural change and commercial success.
Broadcast Countries
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the United States.
Funded By
West Wind Foundation
Weeden Foundation
See our work in action
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