Community involvement in HIV-related policy initiatives: History, experiences, and next steps

Abstract

Despite the undeniable role of policy initiatives in the HIV epidemic, little research has been conducted to evaluate HIV-related policy initiatives that involve partnerships among community members; representatives from community-based organizations, government agencies, and businesses; and academic researchers. In this chapter, we review five policy-change frameworks and the ways in which communities are engaged and partnerships are developed. We then build a rationale for the application of community engagement and partnership and community-based participatory research (CBPR) in HIV-related policy initiatives, providing examples of policy initiatives and lessons learned from such efforts. Lastly, we propose a health-related and community-engaged framework that is informed by existing policy-change frameworks and experiences with policy initiatives that harnessed the strengths of partnerships that included community members; representatives from community-based organizations, government agencies, and businesses; and academic researchers.