C2P (With Venues): Connect to Protect® Partnerships For Youth Prevention Interventions

Phase III's objective is to initiate and complete a community mobilization intervention aimed at reducing HIV incidence and prevalence among youth. The intervention will consist of guiding C2P coalitions through a strategic planning process that will result in the development and implementation of a local action plan. The action plan will focus on changing structural elements of the affected communities that are believed to be associated with youth HIV acquisition and transmission. The effectiveness of the intervention will be evaluated by tracking venues where the population of interest congregates and trends in risk factors associated with HIV acquisition and transmission. ATN 040b evaluates annual anonymous data collection of two cohorts per participating ATN/C2P site. Both cohorts will represent a site's population of focus, but will be recruited in different ways and for different activities. Cohort #1 will be referred to the site via Official Community Partners and word of mouth. Each year of the study, 10 to 20 individuals will be recruited to complete venue-tracking surveys as described in Section 2.1 (N = 40-80 per site over four years). The results will either confirm that the population of focus can still be reached at previously identified congregation venues or reveal new ones that should be considered for further research activities. Each year, based on data from Cohort #1, ATN/C2P site staff will go to two to three of the confirmed and/or new congregation venues to recruit 20 to 30 participants per venue for Cohort #2. These participants will complete the HIV-related risk survey, with the addition of the HIV-Ab assay in the final year only (N = 160-360 per site over four years). Data will be used to evaluate the intervention within and across ATN/C2P sites.