CBPR to prevent HIV within racial/ethnic, sexual, and gender minority communities: Successes with long-term sustainability

Issue: HIV disproportionately affects racial/ethnic, sexual, and gender minority and economically disadvantaged communities.

Description: Our community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership, comprised of scientists and lay-experts from academic, government, and nongovernment institutions, including community-based organizations and businesses; and the community at large has more than a decade-long history of sustained success. We develop, implement, and evaluate interventions to promote sexual health and reduce HIV and sexually transmitted infection among immigrant Latinos and among African American/black, Latino, and white gay and bisexual men, men who have sex with men, and transgender persons.

To assess our CBPR approach, an outside evaluator conducted iterative individual in-depth interviews and facilitated group discussions with CBPR partnership members; directly observed partnership meetings, intervention implementation, and informal interactions; and reviewed documents (e.g., meeting notes). Together, we conducted data analysis and used a nominal group process to refine and finalize findings.

Lessons Learned: We identified 11 underlying values to our partnership approach; 4 predisposing factors (e.g., commitment to social inclusion); 4 enabling factors (e.g., financial stability of involved organizations); and 5 reinforcing factors (e.g., academic partners’ engagement with the core functions of partner agencies) that influence and sustain our CBPR approach; and 7 challenges to engagement, partnership, and CBPR (e.g., conflicts over funding and different emphases on processes and outcomes).

Recommendations: There is a need for continued focus on understanding of the contexts, partner attributes, and partnership characteristics to sustain commitment of diverse partners, conduct authentic CBPR over long periods of time, and improve community health.