Enlisting the University of Illinois at Chicago Community Outreach Intervention Projects' (UIC-COIP) Indigenous Leader Outreach Model to Conduct HIV/AIDS Surveillance

Issue:   The National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) program was developed to help local health departments establish and maintain an HIV surveillance system for monitoring behaviors, services and infection prevalence in three high-risk populations.  Findings are used to understand current HIV risks and testing behaviors, and to develop and evaluate appropriate interventions.  This paper explores the use of UIC-COIP’s Indigenous Leader Outreach Model (ILOM) to assist the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) in conducting the NHBS. 

Description:  The NHBS occurs in annual cycles that sample and collect survey and biological data from men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, and high-risk heterosexuals. Each year one group is targeted.  In 2012 the UIC-COIP entered into an agreement with the CDPH to assist with formative research, assessing and addressing barriers to study participation, participant recruitment, eligibility screening, study enrollment, survey and biological data collection, monitoring of sample composition, and data analyses.  Since then UIC-COIP has helped garner the participation of over 1400 risk group members in the NHBS.

Lessons Learned:  Key factors for achieving NHBS goals include: 1) hiring staff who (a) are members of targeted populations and their communities, (b) carry values, attitudes and beliefs of targeted risk groups and (c) understand problems faced by group members; 2) having accessible service offices in geographically dispersed neighborhoods; 3) a longstanding history of service to targeted populations; and 4) using a social network approach that takes into account the influence of group norms for effective health promotion and research participation.