Evaluating the impact of an academic-community research consortium on HIV testing and research capacity

Community-university partnerships can meet the different priorities of each party involved. Alliances formed between community-based organizations (CBOs) and university-based evaluators/researchers help develop more sophisticated evaluation plans, collect more representative research data, and enhance understanding of the needs of marginalized populations. At the same time, researchers recognize that in order to conduct research that is truly representative of the population of interest, they must venture outside of traditional settings and observe and interact with community members. As these collaborations strive to be reciprocal and mutually beneficial, they can also be fraught with challenges.

This presentation will describe collaborative partnerships between seven CBOs, two academic partners, and a national capacity building agency. These partnerships have resulted in the formation of a five-region consortium known as the Men of Asia and the Pacific Testing for HIV (MATH) Study. This consortium seeks to investigate the HIV prevalence and the sociocultural and behavioral correlates of infection among 1,600 multilingual Asian and Pacific Islander men who have sex with men in the U.S. The activities include formal process and outcome evaluations designed to examine the consortium model's ability to improve the HIV testing and research capacities of community partners. In tracing the history of this effort, we will discuss the implementation of mixed methods to evaluate the consortium's impact (e.g., organizational assessments, monitoring activities, key informant interviews), describe challenges faced in various phases of this evaluation/research project, offer suggestions for overcoming such obstacles, and use evaluation feedback to help the consortium achieve its goals.