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Laurine Thomas, PhD, Center for Applied Behavioral & Evaluation Research, Academy for Educational Development, 1825 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20009, 202 884 8734, lathomas@aed.org, Thomas Clarke, MPH, Center for Applied Behavioral and Evaluation Research, Academy for Educational Development, 1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20009, Susan E. Middlestadt, PhD, Applied Health Science, Indiana University, 116 HPER, Bloomington, IN 47405-4801, and Alice Kroliczak, PhD, Divsion of Science & Policy HIV AIDS Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20857.

CHIVES is a five-site, HRSA/HAB/SPNS-funded demonstration project that is designed to test the effectiveness of peer-support interventions in assisting HIV+ Caribbean immigrants living in the United States to seek primary care in a timely and appropriate manner. Four of the five sites are located in New York. The fifth site is in Miami. The Miami site and one of the New York sites serve Haitian clients. The other sites serve clients from the English and Spanish speaking Caribbean, respectively. This paper describes the outreach strategies undertaken by the five CHIVES demonstration sites. The implementation of the project began with intensive outreach by the five sites to their respective target communities. These efforts have met with some success but also numerous challenges among the target population such as lack of knowledge/ misinformation about HIV, internalized and externalized stigma, immigration status, language. These challenges have been barriers to effective outreach and underscore the difficulty in conducting outreach in a population where HIV/AIDS is highly stigmatized and where health care is not necessarily a priority. The sites have adapted mainstream outreach strategies to be more culturally appropriate to their immigrant targets and used a combination of several strategies including peer education, flexible scheduling, emphasis on confidentiality, and developing strong referral networks to improve the effectiveness of their outreach efforts. This paper discusses these efforts and provides best practices and lessons learned that can inform future attempts to engage immigrant populations in the health care system.

Learning Objectives:

1.Discuss five factors that may be used to guide the selection of outreach strategies for immigrant populations
• Articulate five elements that are essential to conducting effective outreach in immigrant populations

Keywords: Immigrants, Access to Health Care

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered