First Annual Workshop and Conference

A Program of CIFAL Atlanta
Hosted by Emory Rollins School of Public Health
Atlanta, GA, June 19-23, 2005
• Workshop Home

Conclusions, Wrap Up, and Evaluation

Topic: Best Practices Presentations

Georgetown, GUY: We would like to work with the delegations from Brazil and from Seattle.  We found that in our area there was very little evaluation of programs, and everyone was kind of doing their own thing.  We would like to work with other cities to improve our coordination and evaluation.

Houston, TX, USA: We believe in quantitative and qualitative evaluation, and we have developed an elaborate set of protocols for that purpose.  We will be sharing those protocols, as well as a logic model, with San Pedro Sula and Argentina.  We are also hoping to form an alliance with Seattle, where they have linked prevention and care very well.  Likewise, we are interested in their research on computerized HIV-risk self-assessment.

Kingston, JAM, W.I.: Our major challenge is that we have a very strong, very active national program.  But we need to get local players into the process.  The issue of discrimination is very important for us, as many people in local government do not want to talk about it.  We need to gain their acceptance of the importance of the issue.  We had some great discussions with Atlanta, Port of Spain, and Durban, etc.  There was a lot of common ground, despite the differences in location and conditions.  That was a great learning experience and showed us we were not alone.  And it gave us motivation to go back and initiate programs and collect important baseline data, rather than wait for others to do it.  It has been a very empowering experience. 

Mexico City, MEX: We have chosen to collaborate with Seattle in the area of increasing the capacity for risk-control.  We want to improve our capacity for evaluation, and work more with civil society.  We also want to collaborate with AID Atlanta in the area of linking care and prevention.  We want to prepare prevention training, best practices, and share successful experiences with Honduras.  The best way to work is to exchange information with all of these countries. 

Port au Prince, HTI: Our biggest problem is that nobody is talking about AIDS care and prevention.  My organization is one of the first to go in to the community and talk to people about AIDS.  The strength is that people are aware that AIDS is a community problem, and that there are highly-qualified people willing to help out and invest money in AIDS prevention.  In almost every hotel, people are now using condoms, and they are paid for by hotel managers.  We want to increase access to prevention information to youth in schools.  Our best partner for that is Curitiba.  For the short term we will have an information campaign, and in the long-term we will work on educating youth in the schools.  We also want to work with Buenos Aires on access to condoms in the community, as we work towards having a permanent condom distribution point.  Sometimes when we are together, we decide to fight against AIDS, but sometimes we forget about our commitment when we return to our countries.  I decided this week to quit my work with computers and I’m going to start fighting against AIDS full time.  If we keep our commitment, I’m sure that in 1-2 years, I may come back and tell you that our community has been a success story in the AIDS fight.  Keep up the good work.  Thank you.

Port of Spain, TTO: Trinidad is a small nation with just 1.2 million people, a city-state.  There are 49,000 people in the Port of Spain.  We have a very strong national AIDS program and we have recently established a national AIDS coordination committee.  So AIDS is giving priority as an issue.  But much of the information given out on the issue has not reached the vulnerable communities.  In our nation there is a very strong taboo related to sex, and this is behind our AIDS problem.  We have listened to our brothers and sisters from Georgetown, Durban, etc, we have a similar history, and we have found common issues.  We want to link with these cities, as well as Atlanta and some of the other cities.  We want to understand what is going on in these cities, with the realization that we don’t have the resources to carry out all of the best practices that are possible in some other places.  At present, ARV’s are given to those who have HIV, but it is not reaching many PLWA’s, and there is a lot of discrimination.  We are now about to separate, but we will be united in spirit.  Thank you.

Rural Honduras, Province: The exchange of ideas has been very rich.  There are funds from a lot of different resources, but there are problems in collaborating, too much competition and duplication, and poor management of spending.  We working with Quito and Seattle on ways to manage spending and to combine planning committees in order to better coordinate the efforts.  Few local authorities prioritize the AIDS issue, and it’s difficult to get local leaders to step forward to call attention to the issue.  Our colleagues from Mexico have given us good advice on self-sustainable projects and peer-to-peer education. 

Quito, ECU: We have a problem with PLWHA’s getting access to medication.  We want help from Brazil in order to have guidance regarding legal framework for providing medications to PLWHA’s.  We want to work with Rio, and a group that works with Brazil’s ministry of health.  We want to work with Atlanta with ways to accelerate processes because this fight is very complex.  Please come visit us in Quito.  Here, I have learned that difficult times bring out the best in people.  I look forward to collaborating with you all. 

Oakland, CA, USA: I’ve learned that a lot of you don’t have the same resources we do in the USA, but you’re doing a lot of effective work with what little you have.  I hope to visit some of these cities, since I’ve heard so much about their efforts since I’ve been here.  We look forward to working with AID Atlanta.  We’re hoping for help in measuring outcomes of our prevention programs.  We will also work with Denver on collaboration with planning bodies.  We have had a lot of trouble merging the two planning bodies in our community, and we are still struggling to improve the relationship.  Thank you.

Seattle, WA, USA: This has been a great learning experience and I am so happy to meet all of you, and yes, I will travel, I will travel, I will travel….  The group I focused on was identifying and addressing vulnerability.  We do a very good job of identifying problems and carrying out needs assessment.  We provide both preventive services and care.  There are few people who know their status, and aren’t in care, and we want to work to improve the process of going from diagnosis to treatment.  In our planning council, we try to make sure we allocate money for specific needs of various populations.  Our objectives are populations that have too few members to justify programs- programs for women, foreign born blacks, etc.  This year we set aside funding to get more information to help and improve services with these populations.  Our partner city is Atlanta, and our other partner is Durban.  We shared with Durban about coming out and speaking to women about issues of HIV/AIDS.  We will continue our needs assessments, and work on problems of multi-generational poverty.  We will research what other cities are doing in these areas, and we will research very thoroughly, and implement what we learn.  We’re always looking for help with learning and transfer.  We want to help other cities, but we don’t exactly know how, and we’re overwhelmed with the problem and the lack of resources.  Honduras and Atlanta are our partner cities.  We talked to AID Atlanta about care and what to do, and CIFAL can help us with that as well. 

San Pedro Sula, HND: Our action plan we want to include our city committee but also the other participants form Honduras.  We want to improve our efforts at inclusion; we want to make the community participate with true advice and local committees.  The second part is collaboration between local and federal governmental leaders.  We want to make a committee to represent small communities in rural areas.  We want to strengthen local organizations to provide better services in all areas.  To put this into practice, we will collaborate with Curitiba and Buenos Aires.  For the short and long term goals, we will try some advocacy and lobbying of the government.  We will try to make the government and civil society participate.  We will organize a conference with staff from health services regarding treatment and prevention issues.  Our strong point is that in our city it is understood that there must be a link between prevention and treatment….  We want to work with Atlanta, especially AID Atlanta.  We are going to coordinate efforts from the government and the private and services sectors.  We want to have a collaborative network.  Though we know our programs are working, we don’t really know how to measure and evaluate them.  We’re going to begin to work to improve our evaluation.…  We want to collaborate with Atlanta and Houston.   We’re going to design strategies to access resources both locally and externally.  We want to keep permanent contact with Denver and continue collaborating. We have learned a lot and we are going to fight against discrimination and stigma in our country. 

San Francisco, CA, USA: Often, we in San Francisco believe we know more than anyone else about this issue, and you all have taught me that I still have a lot to learn.  We have strengths- a capacity to collect data and utilize that information in implementing responses.  We want to identify and collect specific information on vulnerability, and develop an environmental scan in real time which looks at social factors in a community and their relationship to HIV.  We want to assess vulnerable vs. at-risk populations.  We will conduct a situational analysis of social factors and their impact on our health status.  We will develop a quarterly communication system with Atlanta (Sister Love, AID Atlanta), as well as CBO’s, NGO’s, local govt. etc from San Francisco.  I will convene a stakeholder meeting to complete the self-assessment.  I am willing to share our knowledge about the fight against AIDS with anyone who asks.  Thank you.

San Juan, PR, USA: A lot of us complain and we don’t realize what our counterparts our going through.  I’d like to thank Seattle and Atlanta; they really have their stuff together.  I know from here that we will advance.  I will personally contact everyone who has given me their business card.  I want all the information you can offer.  I want help in how to organize our civil activities and fight the bias. 

This exercise helped us identify things to improve and create an action plan to identify community needs and to carry out follow-up.  It has helped to realize that we all face common problems, and to know that it is a lot of work to measure and evaluate and create effective programs.  We hope to create better commitment from local and state agencies.  We would like to thank Seattle, Atlanta, etc.  We want to reinforce access to treatment.  We want to redesign documents we already have.  We will try to implement new policies so that we follow the leading trends in the fight against AIDS.  We will work to stop discrimination and remove the stigma associated with AIDS.  Thank you all for sharing your knowledge and trusting us with this responsibility. 

Curitiba, BRA: Through this experience, we have learned a lot.  I would like to share something else, that for those cities like Buenos Aires that have many people living in poverty, we have few resources to address HIV/AIDS, it forces us to improve our efficiency.  One of our weakest points is evaluation of change.  We would like help from Atlanta to adapt tools for measuring change.  We want to collaborate with Atlanta…  We want to work with Brazil, Honduras, and Mexico to work on adapting our response.  We’re going to form a coalition to work together and form new strategies.  We want to work with Denver to mobilize resources and optimize our resources and increase efficiency.  The intention is to train a team, and form a database, and to be clear about our priorities.  For that reason, we are going to collaborate with Haiti, for the training and coordination of facilitators.  I want to make a commitment now to take back all of the information you have given me and share it with as many people as possible.  Thank you.

Rio de Janeiro, BRA: It was good to network and find out about methods that work.  I would like to send information to you all about evaluation of pharmaceutical service, and about patents and access to medicines, which is my specialty, as well as about patient satisfaction. 

Atlanta, GA, USA: I’d like to thank everyone on behalf of AID Atlanta and our local planning council.  Thank you for coming and being so open to learn about us.  I was initially very skeptical about this process.  In a program we have in South Africa, we say ‘trust in the process, and trust your program’ and that’s what we have managed to do here.  We have to remember the people who have died from AIDS, and that they are the reason why we are here working, and working hard to eventually not have to be here at all.  Thanks to Jim Curran from speaking at our luncheon.  When Jim stepped down at the CDC, the role of the CDC changed, and I would not say for the better. 

In Atlanta we are committing to a lot of work.  Look to us, but also aim higher, because we have a long way to go.  We have 4 primary partners for collaborating.  3 have been about building relationships between organizations that have skills to share- ways of working, community involvement, program implementation.  We want to work with Mexico City to coordinate work on the migrant population here.  At a city level, we have committed to work with Oakland and San Francisco, and we all work together on the common vulnerabilities we have identified.  I’ll be going out there in October for face-to-face meetings, in addition to electronic and telephone communication.  In terms of addressing vulnerabilities, we have made a commitment here to make more connections between care and prevention, to consider vulnerability vs. risk, and to reflect that in our program planning.  Our leadership issue is still a huge question.  You have yet to see our local leaders and policy makers in this room this week, so we still have a long way to go.

We will be broadcasting our 89.3 WRFG tomorrow night at 6-7 PM.