Times and Places: Process Evaluation of a Peer-Led HIV Prevention Intervention

Abstract

Here we present results from a process evaluation of a peer-led HIV prevention intervention. The Risk Avoidance Partnership, conducted from 2001 to 2005, trained active drug users to be peer health advocates (PHAs) to provide harm reduction materials and information to their peers. Results indicate that PHAs actively conducted harm reduction outreach both when partnered with staff and on their own time. Although PHAs conducted most of their outreach in public locations, they also provided drug users with harm reduction materials at critical moments in places where HIV risky behaviors were likely to occur. PHAs were credible and trusted sources of information to their drug-using peers who sought PHAs out for HIV prevention materials. Process evaluations of successful HIV prevention interventions are necessary to understand how and why such interventions work for further intervention refinement.

Keywords:

• drug users
• gatekeepers
• harm reduction
• HIV
• outreach
• peer health advocates (PHAs)
• peer-led interventions
• prevention

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julia Dickson-Gomez

Julia Dickson-Gomez, Ph.D., is a medical anthropologist at the Institute for Community Research. Her research interests include HIV prevention among active drug users in the V.S. and El Salvador. Previous research interests include the long-term effects of war on families in post-war El Salvador.

Margaret Weeks

Margaret R. Weeks, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and Executive Director of the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, CT. She has conducted community-based, applied social science research on HIV/AIDS prevention among drug users and their partners and evaluated AIDS prevention programs in collaboration with other community research and service organizations both in the US. and China.

Maria Martinez

Maria Martinez has been involved in providing HIV prevention outreach, interventions, advocacy, and services to active drug users and commercial sex workers for over 15 years. Currently she is Outreach Coordinator at the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, CT.

Mark Convey

Mark Convey, M.A. (1.0 FTE), is a medical anthropologist with several years experience in qualitative data collection techniques and community-based research with urban drug users and male sex workers.