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As people are living longer and healthier lives with HIV, the risk of HIV transmission through unprotected sexual intercourse or sharing injection equipment continues to grow. While the general consensus is that most people who know they are HIV+ are careful to avoid transmitting the virus, it is estimated that one third of HIV+ gay/bisexual men continue to engage in unprotected sex. There is now a growing call to develop targeted and effective prevention strategies addressing the specific needs of people living with HIV.

Research & Resources

This brochure lists research projects with African Americans and helpful resources produced by CAPS/PRC. You might use it to:

• Stay up-to-date on research and learn what we found out from research
• Provide materials in trainings/presentations
• Advocate for services/funding
• Write grants
• Develop new or modify existing HIV prevention programs
• Evaluate current programs
• Connect with CAPS/PRC to develop new projects. Lead researchers (PIs) are listed for each study. Contact us below to connect.

Questions? Comments? Contact Daryl Mangosing at 415-514-4590 or [email protected] This brochure was prepared by the CAPS Community Engagement (CE) Core, which is previously known as the Technology and Information Exchange (TIE) Core.

Acronyms

MSM: Men who have sex with men PI: Principal Investigator (lead researcher on the study)

When the latest HIV prevalence consensus report was released in San Francisco in 1997, statistics revealed increasing HIV rates among gay and bisexual men of color. Among gay men of color, Latinos had the highest rates of HIV infection. In response to this, the STOP AIDS Project decided to heighten their HIV prevention efforts for Latino gay and bisexual men. STOP AIDS convened a meeting for all of the agencies in San Francisco providing HIV prevention services for Latino gay and bisexual men. “We wanted to bring all of the providers to the same table to increase communication between the agencies and to learn what types of HIV prevention activities each of the agencies were doing.” said Héctor Carillo, former STOP AIDS Project Deputy Director and current CAPS researcher. Another aim was to get a sense of which segments of the gay Latino community each agency was reaching. “What we discovered in that meeting was that we were all reaching a part of this diverse community. There was overlap, but each agency had access to a specific segment of the community,” Héctor said. Acknowledging and integrating each community based organizations’ expertise strengthened the campaign. “Every organization was valued and every group was covered and it made folks feel less defensive.” said Robert Pérez, former Communications Director of STOP AIDS. At that meeting, the agencies realized that there was no unified media to reach the community as a whole, and decided to pursue a media campaign. The STOP AIDS Project had the experience in developing media campaigns and access to funds for the project, while the other agencies had access to each of the various segments of the gay Latino community. Representatives from all of the agencies involved formed a planning committee to create the media campaign. The result is “Families Change, Families Grow/Las Familias Cambian, Las Familias Crecen”– a research-grounded media campaign created through this collaborative effort involving Mission Neighborhood Health Center, Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida, El Ambiente and the STOP AIDS Project.

As part of the Committee on Human Research (CHR) process improvement project analysis, we discovered that poorly-prepared submissions negatively impacted the review and approval times of well-prepared submissions by diverting significant time and resources to a small fraction of poorly prepared submissions. Consequently, the CHR office is implementing consistent minimum submission standards. Instituting this new procedure will enable CHR staff to focus on well-prepared applications, resulting in faster reviews and approvals overall.

Public health researchers and practitioners often work to solve complex population and health issues, such as obesity and chronic disease, which are deeply embedded within the fabric of society. As such, the solutions often require intervention and engagement with key stakeholders and organizations across many levels ranging from local entities (schools, churches, and work environments) to regional systems (health departments and hospital networks) to entire countries (national agencies). This multi-level, multi-participant view is at the heart of systems thinking, a process of understanding how parts influence one another within a whole.