Collaborating with families and communities to prevent youth HIV risk taking and exposure

Decades into the HIV epidemic, those impacted by this stigmatizing -disease disproportionately reside in urban communities of color. Early HIV prevention efforts experienced a myriad of challenges reaching large numbers of African American and Latino youth residing in the most deeply affected communities. Over time, it has become increasingly clear that in order to decrease barriers to -implementation and increase access and service use, preventative efforts must shift focus to include collaboration with families, social networks and communities. There have been calls to maximize collaboration between prevention scientists and key HIV prevention stakeholders, particularly parents and family members, in order to design relevant risk reduction programs for youth living within high risk urban contexts. This chapter describes models of collaboration with families in connection with their communities which can create sustainable HIV prevention and overall health promotion platforms within inner-city community contexts.