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Since 1991, the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) has conducted collaborative research with local community-based HIV prevention organizations within a consortium model. Community-based research (CBR) refers to research that is conducted by or with the participation of community members. As conducted by CAPS, CBR was a full partnership, with the CBO partner taking the lead on developing the research question, delivering the intervention, and collecting the data. The academic researcher took the lead on developing the instrument, consent procedures, data collection protocol, and data analysis. Together, the academic/CBO team trained intervention and evaluation staff, interpreted the data, crosstrained on service and research issues, and disseminated the findings. We developed a model which supported joint work and negotiation of research activities, as opposed to a model where the academic researcher conducts a study on the CBO’s clients, with the CBO mainly providing access to clients.

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.

Rates of smoking among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents and adults appear to be higher than rates for the general population (Gruskin, et al., 2001; Ryan, et al., 2001; Stall, et al., 1999). Smoking is also likely problematic among transgender people, many of whom face poverty, homelessness, stressful living and work environments, and depression in their daily lives. Despite the fact that smoking negatively impacts or complicates health issues of particular importance to LGBT persons (e.g., hormone therapy for transgender people, HIV/AIDS), tobacco companies target these communities. Yet, there is little research on smoking cessation by and for LGBT persons. Community activists in San Francisco started working more than a decade ago to address these problems. In the early 1990’s, Lyon-Martin Women’s Health Services initiated “The Last Drag,” the first stop-smoking group for LGBT and HIV positive smokers. The California Lavender Smokefree Project (CLSP), funded by the state in the mid-90’s, counteracted tobacco industry targeting of LGBT communities. In 1996, the Coalition of Lavender Americans on Smoking and Health (CLASH), with the help of Progressive Research and Training for Action (PRTA), (a community-based organization specializing in LGBT technical assistance), held Alive with Pleasure! the first federally funded conference on tobacco use among California’s LGBT population. In 1998, at the urging of CLASH members, the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) launched its first tobacco study with gay/bisexual men.