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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Dallas Swendeman, MPH, UCLA, 834 Indiana Ave., Venice, CA 90291, 310-804-1806, metacom@ucla.edu

Background: “HIV is our patron saint. Without it nobody would have cared about our rights”, Sex Worker & NGO officer. In 1992 the Sonagachi Project was initiated as an STD/HIV health education and promotion program that has evolved into “Durbar”, a multi-component community health and development program for sex workers, their children, and other marginalized people. “Only rights can stop the wrongs,” a key slogan of the organization, expresses their awareness and intervention at the intersection of human rights and HIV/STDs.

Methods: Data from a quasi-experimental longitudinal intervention trial (n=200) will be integrated with data from subsequent semi-structured interviews (n=90) and community surveys (n=400) with sex workers and others collected in 2005-2006.

Results: Quasi-experimental data indicates that the program impacts both condom use (39% intervention vs. 11% control; B = 0.3447, p = 0.002) and empowerment (B = 3.101, p < 0.001). Empowerment embodies several human rights based domains including education, self-protection, self-reliance, free association, health care, voting, credit & savings, etc. Data on these outcomes will be reported individually.

Conclusion: Durbar utilizes intervention framing and activities drawn from human, workers', women's and other rights-focused organizations and social movements. Results suggest that addressing human rights “empowers” health protective behaviors and outcomes.

Learning Objectives:

• Articulate the program’s components designed to mitigate structural barriers to health and human rights for stigmatized and marginalized people such as sex workers.
• Trace the programs strategic and collaborative development in efforts to the needs of its’ community given severe poverty, gender and class inequality.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered