Preventing HIV among black men in college using a CBPR approach

Issue: The African American/black population is disproportionately burdened by HIV and AIDS. Currently available HIV interventions tend to focus on risk reduction and treatment among other population subgroups, while a paucity of HIV prevention strategies have been demonstrated to be efficacious and effective for African American/black heterosexual men, particularly those of college age.

Description: Our collaborative, which included African American/black men and women; representatives from local community-based organizations; and university staff and faculty, convened and applied principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR) to develop, implement, and evaluate an innovative HIV prevention intervention entitled: Brothers Leading Healthy Lives. This intervention was designed to reduce HIV exposure and transmission among African American/black heterosexual men attending college in the southeastern United States.

Lessons Learned: We experienced unique challenges and opportunities related to engaging students as CBPR partners including: competing priorities of students, time commitment and burden, experiences of on-campus discrimination and micro-aggressions, representativeness of student partners to their larger communities, and the temporary and transitory nature of a college campus. We also experienced unique challenges to conducting CBPR under a CDC cooperative agreement, including lack of understanding of both the local context and CBPR approaches.

Recommendations: Mutual understanding is a continual process; therefore, community engagement of and partnership with African American/black heterosexual men in college require creative ongoing trust and history building and flexibility in structure and decision-making.