Program Abstract

The purpose of the Southern Border HIV/AIDS Project is to improve HIV/AIDS outreach, and access to testing and primary care services and cross-border linkages for people who live or work in San Diego or Imperial counties. The number of new AIDS cases for Latinos is disproportionately high relative to their total population nationwide and in the border region. The underserved sub-populations targeted in this program are: 1) newly immigrated Latinos; 2) migrant and permanent farm workers; 3) Latinas; and 4) Latino men who have sex with men.

The three major goals of this program are to: 1) increase early detection of the underserved HIV-positive Latino/a population; 2) increase access to comprehensive HIV/AIDS primary care services; and 3) enhance the capacity of community health centers to provide culturally sensitive care.

One of the project's major accomplishments has been forming and sustaining an excellent working relationship between the lead agency (San Ysidro Health Center), local evaluation agency (University of California, San Diego) and the four partner sites. The key to sustaining the collaboration has been fostering effective communication among the partners, dissemination of information and accessibility of key Lead Agency and Evaluation staff. A problem-solving strategy has been developed and has proven useful in resolving programmatic and evaluation issues.

Planned Year 4 activities include: 1) analysis of the Social Marketing Campaign developed and implemented in Year 3 using Spanish language radio to encourage the target population to get tested, 2) assessment of existing information and referral services and enhancement of linkages with HIV/AIDS providers on both sides of the border; 3) on-going evaluation feedback to partner sites, and 4) continuation of dissemination activities, including publications.

Evaluation activities included revision of the Logic Model, development of three new data instruments for the social marketing campaign and the creation of data cleaning programs for quality assurance of local databases. The UCSD Committee on the Protection of Human Subjects approved continuation of project activities and new data instruments. Evaluation activities anticipated in Year 04 include examining transborder medical utilization of HIV+ Latinos/as, client knowledge of services, efficacy/cost effectiveness of the social marketing campaign and collaboration in the development and evaluation of the culturally competent training curriculum.