Racial/ethnic disparities in the HIV and substance abuse epidemics: communities responding to the need

In 1998, community leaders prompted members of the Black and Hispanic Congressional Caucuses to urge President Clinton to declare HIV/AIDS a crisis in the African American and Latino communities; their advocacy resulted in the formation of the Minority AIDS Initiative. As part of this initiative, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency funded the Substance Abuse and HIV Prevention Youth and Women of Color Initiative (CSAP Initiative). The CSAP Initiative is the first major federal effort to develop community-based integrated HIV and substance abuse prevention approaches targeting racial/ethnic populations that have been disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS. This article describes the current state of HIV prevention research involving racial/ethnic minority populations and the current status of the CSAP Initiative. The data collected through the CSAP Initiative, implemented by 47 community organizations, will help to fill the existing knowledge gap about how to best prevent HIV in these communities. This data collection effort is an unparalleled opportunity to learn about risk and protective factors, including contextual factors, that are critical to the prevention of HIV/AIDS in African American, Latino, and other racial/ethnic minority communities but that are often not investigated.