Structural issues affecting creation of a community action and advocacy board

The most effective woman-initiated method to prevent HIV/sexually transmitted infections is the female condom (FC). Yet, FCs are often difficult to find and denigrated or ignored by community health and service providers. Evidence increasingly supports the need to develop and test theoretically driven, multilevel interventions using a community-empowerment framework to promote FCs in a sustained way. We conducted a study in a midsized northeastern US city (2009-2013) designed to create, mobilize and build capacity of a community group to develop and implement multilevel interventions to increase availability, accessibility and support for FCs in their city. The Community Action and Advocacy Board (CAAB) designed and piloted interventions concurrently targeting community, organizational and individual levels. Ethnographic observation of the CAAB training and intervention planning and pilot implementation sessions documented the process, preliminary successes, challenges and limitations of this model. The CAAB demonstrated ability to conceptualize, plan and initiate multilevel community change. However, challenges in group decision-making and limitations in members' availability or personal capacity constrained CAAB processes and intervention implementation. Lessons from this experience could inform similar efforts to mobilize, engage and build capacity of community coalitions to increase access to and support for FCs and other novel effective prevention options for at-risk women.