Jesús Sánchez
Department of Sociobehavioral and Administrative Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA

Series: Social Issues, Justice and Status
BISAC: SOC026000

Despite the unique and challenging circumstances confronting Latino migrant worker communities in the United States, debate still exists as to the need to culturally adapt evidence-based interventions for dissemination with this population. Project Salud adopted a community-based participatory research model and utilized focus group methodology with 83 Latino migrant workers to explore the relevance of culturally adapting an evidence-based HIV prevention intervention to be disseminated within this population. Findings from this study indicate that, despite early reservations, Latino migrant workers wanted to participate in the cultural adaptation that would result in an intervention that was culturally relevant, respectful, responsive to their life experiences, and aligned with their needs.

Our findings also indicate that, relative to the comparison condition, A-SEMI participants reported more consisted condom use, were less likely to report never having used condoms, and more likely to use condoms at last sexual encounter during the past 90 and 30 days. A-SEMI participants also experienced a positive change in regard to factors for HIV-preventative behaviors over the entire 9-month period. Our results support the implementation of community-based, culturally tailored interventions among Latino migrant workers. The study results also contribute to the cultural adaptation/fidelity debate by highlighting the necessity of exploring ways to develop culturally adapted interventions characterized by high cultural relevance without sacrificing high fidelity to the core components that have established efficacy for evidence-based HIV prevention interventions.
(Imprint: Nova)