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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Rachel Middlesteadt Ellerson¹, Wendy K. Lam, PhD¹, Wendee M. Wechsberg, PhD¹, Winnie Luseno, MA¹, William A. Zule, DrPH², and Cassie Williams¹. (1) Substance Abuse Treatment Evaluations and Interventions, RTI International, 3040 Cornwallis Rd, P.O. Box 12194, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194, 919-541-7255, rachelm@rti.org, (2) Substance Abuse Treatment Interventions and Evaluations, RTI International, 3040 Cornwallis Road, PO Box 12194, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194

As HIV continues to spread worldwide, indigenous field workers are the first contact for reaching the high risk populations in community-based settings. This contact can set the stage for how an individual will respond to prevention messages being delivered. While having field workers indigenous to the target community is key to gaining trust to effectively recruit and effectively deliver prevention interventions, field workers and structured protocol adherence and documentation have not always been congruent. The ability to streamline paperwork, yet collect data necessary for accountability evaluations is essential to the success of future community-based HIV interventions that target high risk and marginalized populations. Outreach and tracking methods developed from over 10 years of community-based applied research experience in reaching and intervening with hidden populations of drug users not in treatment, maternal drug users, and sex workers in the US and South Africa will be presented. Specifically, this presentation will highlight lessons learned about balancing flexibility needed to employ indigenous field workers with the demands of structured health research protocols. This session will present strategies that are easy-to-use in the real life context of community-based field work and meet the demands of scientific documentation. In addition, lessons learned about conducting HIV prevention outreach with indigenous field workers regarding issues of ethics and confidentiality will be presented. Given the rapid spread of HIV to marginalized populations, understanding this balance between gaining access to the community and adhering to structured scientific protocols for HIV prevention will be critical to reducing HIV worldwide.

Learning Objectives:

• 1)Present user- friendly paper work for documenting daily activities and processes for HIV prevention field workers.
• 2)To learn how these documents can be used to estimate cost of a intervention.

Keywords: Community Outreach, HIV Interventions

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered