Recruitment of New Hispanic Immigrants in HIV Prevention Research

The U.S. Hispanic population is diverse in culture and countries of origin, and is experiencing unique influences from social and behavioral acculturation. The numerous Hispanic immigrant populations provide complex research challenges and opportunities, especially as data-based strategies and interventions become increasing needed in the provision of appropriate and effective HIV prevention and care alternatives. Together with their demographic growth, recent attention garnered by the rising number of HIV diagnoses among Hispanic groups challenge researchers, advocates and policymakers to identify HIV prevention and care priorities that address the contexts and needs of these populations. Thus, New Hispanic Communities and HIV Risk was designed as a short-term, qualitative, exploratory study of new immigrant groups in New York from the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico (N=301). The communities studied were situated in urban, suburban and semi-rural locations and the research subjects were recently arrived (within the last 3 years) in the US. However, the implementation of this study provided far more learning than the data collection proposed. The process of recruitment of participants for this study provided valuable insights into potential barriers and facilitators to enlisting and maintaining Hispanic immigrants' collaboration in behavioral research. The recruitment process also illustrated how efforts at recruitment could and did involve activities which served the communities and also aided in legitimizing the study and researchers. Thus, this paper will describe recruitment strategies and will address lessons learned in working with hard-to-reach new immigrant communities and the achievement of their collaboration in HIV prevention research.