Development of a Community-Based Participatory Research Effort to Evaluate Conventional HIV Testing (CHT) and HIV Rapid Testing (HRT)

A community-based participatory research (CBPR) project was created to study the effects of changing HIV testing protocols on client risk behaviors in an urban area. Concerns raised by the agency advisory group led to development of research questions that needed to be addressed within the community. The article focuses on development of the research partnership and study enrollment during the first year of the project. Challenges of assimilating rapid advances in health technology while conducting outreach to high-risk clients are discussed. Successes and lessons learned are described, including adaptation of theory-based interventions to research protocol and multi-level community coordination. (C) 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.