Community-based Organizations and CDC As Partners in HIV Education and Prevention

By 1982, community responses to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic were evident in some cities in the United States. Community responses were planned, developed, and coordinated largely by service-oriented, community-based organizations. Indirect evidence suggests that such organizations' activities mainly were in the form of attempting to discourage behaviors associated with the transmission of human immunodeficiency virus. During 1984, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) assessed the educational activities of community-based organizations and public health agencies in several cities nationwide. Investigators found that in those cities where health education had become a secondary activity within a health department, prevention activities tended to be ineffective. They noted that the challenge of the epidemic lay in finding effective strategies for disseminating relevant information. They concluded that prevention efforts directed to groups at risk needed to be appropriate to the lifestyle, language, and environment of a particular risk group. CDC recognized these findings by adopting a policy of support of community-based organizations in its overall AIDS prevention strategy.