FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

African Americans and Latinos represent about one-quarter of the country's population, yet account for more than half the new AIDS cases each year. In order to find a vaccine that works for everyone in need of it, it is important that African Americans and Latinos participate in the studies. If we are not represented, we will not know how these vaccines work in our bodies, or in our communities.

A safe and effective vaccine, together with education, condoms, and counseling, is our best hope to end this epidemic.

Project Embrace seeks to find answers to this question, as well as to why those African Americans and Latinos who do participate got involved, and stay involved. Project Embrace will use this information to keep learning more and developing new methods for recruitment.

Project Embrace happened in several phases, each one of which was conducted with guidance and advice from our Community Advisory Board and other interested individuals from various African American and Latino communities.

Stage I: Project Embrace staff members interviewed 33 opinion leaders from diverse African American and Latino communities. We interviewed them to get their expert opinions about the factors that encourage or discourage African Americans and Latinos from study participation, and to get their feedback about the research process.

We then used this information to create an interview guide for the next phase and held a community forum to bring together community members, key leaders, and the research team to introduce the study and ask for on-going feedback.

Stage II: We conducted 36 in-depth interviews with people of different ages, ethnicities and genders from a variety of African American and Latino communities who were willing to share their personal knowledge, thoughts and opinions with us. These interviews were emotional, heart-felt and rich in content. We now have a wealth of information that we are beginning to analyze and use to develop new strategies to engage African Americans and Latinos in HIV vaccine trials.

Stage III: We will implement new recruitment strategies based on what we learned, including a new advertising campaign. We will evaluate these strategies by doing another set of interviews with African American and Latino individuals who express interest in the studies, both those who do decide to participate and those who do not.

Stage IV: We see this study as the beginning of an ongoing dialogue with African American and Latino communities about HIV vaccine trials. We will continue to listen to the community's concerns, share our results, and continue to build strong relationships with African American and Latino communities.