Unity in Diversity: Building Community Partnerships for Latino Health Promotion & Research

Objectives: Objectives include provision of an enhanced community outreach model for developing partnerships between health and human service professionals and researchers. The project, a 5 year NIH-funded intervention study, established in a Spanish-speaking migrant community in South Florida, focuses on HIV prevention and testing. The process of building culturally appropriate support networks for Latino migrants enhanced this research. Community partners became active from start to finish by aiding in decision making, leading to informed policy, cultural acceptability, coordination of care, and quality programming.

Methods: The Center for Health Research and Policy has actively built and maintained community partnerships for over a decade. Researchers first contacted a small group of previously engaged local health and human services providers to serve as a “community advisory board” immediately following project funding. During the start-up phase, this group branched out. A key to this success is a solid framework building on collaboration between academia and community organizations. Evaluation measures on participation in decisions include: attendance; integration of suggestions and feedback on materials; staff referrals and performance levels of interagency efforts for coordination of care.

Results: The integration of community partners, local multi-lingual research staff, and Latino peer networks in decision making provided a solid foundation for which to base the research. Because researchers took the time to establish themselves in solidarity with community partners, the project's integrity and reputation became evident to aid recruitment and spread the word about HIV testing and education among migrants and locally established Latinos.