http://www.basnyc.org
The Bronx Boogie Down Project is a collaboration of Bronx AIDS Services, Inc. (BAS) and the Adolescent AIDS Program of the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center (AAP). The project strives to improve outreach, care and prevention services to engage seropositive YCMSM in the region and help them stay in care.     

The project strives to use social and geographic mapping, performed by community ethnographer-organizers (CEOs), to identify high-risk areas for this target population, and then develop new methods of outreach to improve access to services and establish use of popular opinion leaders. Once outreach has taken place, the program expects to enroll 15 to 20 YCMSM of color to medical care per year and achieve risk reduction and retention in care among participants. The local evaluation includes mapping and focus groups with the target population followed by content analysis using Ethnograph, and process evaluation.

[click here to see Site Presentation given at January 2005 Grantee Meeting]

Intervention

• Ethnographic investigation, followed by outreach in mobile van with counseling and testing, then entry and retention into care with assistance of case management model
• Training of CEOs who will examine and map social and sexual networks
• Community organizing and individualized interviewing by CEOs that convey HIV information and identify HIV+ not in care
• Outreach to agencies that serve YMSM Standard and CTR and linking of HIV+ to care and accompanying HIV+ to appointments
• Case management and support services management with prevention counseling by case manager and/or support services manager
• Rapid testing of partners of HIV+

Outputs  

• 10 CEOs trained and CEO interviews
• 100 MSM and maps four Bronx communities
• 80-100 HIV+ linked to care, 10 partners of HIV+ receive rapid testing
• Connection for seropositive into care via a case management model for n=15 to 20 YCMSM annually

Short Term Outcomes

• Increased use of CTR services.
• Increased knowledge of personal serostatus
• Increased use of services by HIV+
• Increased adherence of HIV+ to treatment plans and medications
• 60% of HIV+ who receive behavioral counseling will reduce one risky behavior

Long Term Outcomes 

• Improved health status of HIV+.
• Reduced HIV infection within the community

Proposed Local Evaluation Strategy 

• Primarily qualitative and ethnographic endeavor using social network evaluation, with mapping of target population and mapping YCMSM