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HIV/AIDS Health Promotion an Education
Cooperative Agreement Program
Fiscal Year 2004

fgutierrez@nastad.org

Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino

The Increasing Access to Prevention and Care in Communities of Color project is designed to increase health department knowledge of barriers and challenges African Americans and Latinos face in accessing HIV/AIDS prevention and care services; provide opportunities for communities of color to share perspectives and recommendations with health department staff; and increase health departments’ staff self-assessed cultural competency. With state health departments, forums and workshops are conducted at the local level to increase health department knowledge and cultural competence, and community access to HIV/AIDS prevention and care services in African American and Latino communities. The forums are used to provide a mechanism for at-risk communities to share perspectives on barriers to accessing HIV/AIDS care, and to develop recommendations to state health department HIV/AIDS staff on issues that address primary HIV prevention and access to care for communities of color. The meetings target African American and/or Latino communities in rural areas of South Carolina, North Carolina and Kentucky, communities in Arizona and Texas that share a border with Mexico, and Caribbean and Latin American immigrant/migrant communities in Florida. Following the forums, the targeted health departments are provided with program and policy recommendations that address challenges associated with racial and ethnic disparities in accessing and delivering HIV/AIDS prevention and care services in their jurisdictions. The project also facilitates workshops, sessions and meetings around HIV/AIDS issues specific to communities of color at state and regional conferences, meetings, and community forums in states outside of those targeted for the previously described forums, and at national AIDS conferences.