Building and sustaining trust for community-engaged research with a "hidden" community: The House and Ball communities

African American young men who have sex with men (AAYMSM) continue to be disproportionately affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and underrepresented in intervention research. Community based participatory research (CBPR) is a method which could help to finally reverse this inequity. The principles of CBPR are critical to successful and well-grounded research with “hidden populations,” and can support the development of relevant and beneficial interventions. In this study, we describe the methods used to establish trust and rapport with the House and Ball communities, which are primarily comprised of AAYMSM. House leaders approached our research team, concerned about HIV-risk within their commuity, wanting to “serve as gatekeepers for this project to ensure that our community is fully active in its own knowledge gathering, analysis of data and the development of future interventions”.

This presentation will focus on the efforts used to build trust and relationships with these communities. The research team faced initial challenges in describing the aim and scope of the study to the community members as well as overcoming the perception of a historical lack of service providers engaging with these communities. However, we identified several components that led to a successful community-research partnership including: 1) presence and commitment over time; 2) transparency of research methods and goals; 3) solicitation of perspectives on research process; and 4) research approach that values partnership between community and research staff. These components led to a valuable relationship between researchers and community members that provided entrée into the House and Ball communities.