Organizing Asian Pacific Islanders in an Urban Community to Reduce HIV Risk: A Case Study

We present a case study of community organization efforts within the Asian Pacific Islander communities of San Diego County to reduce the risk of HIV transmission. We utilized a five-phase process to implement the strategies of locality development, social planning, and social action: community analysis, program design and initiation, program implementation, program maintenance and consolidation, and program reassessment. An evaluation of the process indicates that there were increases over time in the project's activities as well as in the levels of interagency connectedness. This is one of the few reported efforts to organize Asian Pacific Islander groups to address HIV transmission. Key elements that led to the successful organization of the original project into a tax-exempt nonprofit entity (the Asian Pacific Islander Community AIDS Project) were emphasis on community ownership, reliance on group consensus, use of "gatekeepers" to access communities, simultaneous multilevel programming, and service to the community as a "coordinating" entity.