A Culturally Sensitive Community-Participative Program to Promote Minority Support for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Research: A Social Networking Approach

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:Through the use of the Diffusion of Innovations, this program promoted and educated African Americansand Latino-Americans about HIV vaccines.

Methods:NMACs Community Liaison Program was a one-year pilot program to test a new strategy for dispelling public misconceptions and increasing African American and Latino awareness, knowledge and support for HIV vaccine research. This grass-roots program was designed to mobilize community members to serve as messengers who introduce their family members, friends and associates to much-needed facts about HIV vaccine research. The liaisons were trained (via audio conference calls and online tutorials) to plan, develop, implement and evaluate health communication campaigns. Their campaigns were designed to recruit local community residents to educate other community members about the potential benefits of HIV vaccine research and the importance of community support. The majority of the liaisons were primarily African American females residing in urban areas, between the ages of 41 and 60. One Latina and one Caucasian male liaison made specific outreach to Latino communities. NMAC worked in close collaboration with health communication researchers at George Mason University to create the culturally sensitive message the liaisons would use in their communities to recruit African Americans and Latinos to help spread the word about HIV vaccine research. Several different variations of the message were developed. The community liaisons conducted focus groups with representatives of their target audiences to see which messages they preferred and to find out if any revisions to the messages were needed. After analyzing the data collected from the focus groups, two messages were selected to be used for each of the communities (African American an The Community Liaison Program used a technique known as ‘each-one-teach-one’. Each individual that received the HIV vaccine research message created for the program was encouraged to pass the information on to three others, and ask them to do the same thing. The original goal was to reach 500 community residents, and to have at least 250 of them express a willingness to share the message with three other people.

Results:Within seven-weeks, the seven community liaisons reached a total of 644 community residents, of whom 343 were willing to share the message with three other community membersThese findings were in keeping with the research and the methodology employed by NMAC, which stresses cultural sensitivity and having messengers, trainers, consultants who resemble or can relate to the population targeted.

Conclusions: This exploratory program exceeded expectations. Instead of having 10 liaisons reach 500 community residents and recruit 250 to serve as messengers, 7 liaisons reached 644 community residents and recruited 343 of those residents to share the message with others.

Implications for research and/or practice:  This project provides encouraging data suggesting that health communication interventions that use culturally sensitive social networking strategies can successfully promote minority community awareness and support (information dissemination) for HIV vaccine research.