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HIV has spread dramatically in minority communities, with African Americans currently being five times as likely as whites to contract HIV, and the disproportion continues to increase. Historically, few minority investigators have been funded by the NIH. Culturally appropriate measurements and methods are needed to successfully involve respondents and accurately measure their beliefs, values, and behaviors. Investigators who are members of minority groups often have more access to the minority community and more credibility within that community. In addition, they may have a greater understanding of the cultural issues that could influence behavior, and they often have language fluency

The Voluntary HIV-1 Counseling and Testing Efficacy Study was designed to measure the efficacy of HIV VCT in developing country and resource poor settings where access to antiretrovirals and other expensive medications is difficult or impossible.

Physicians, researchers, public health practitioners and patients are deluged with unmanageable amounts of information about the best approaches to prevention, treatment and health care delivery. Over the last 30 years, there has been an exponential rise in the number of published scientific articles across health fields. There have been 131,000 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) completed since 1948,1 over 2 million articles are published annually in the biomedical literature in over 20,000 journals,2 and over 3,330 journals are indexed in MEDLINE.

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