I propose conducting a comprehensive, social history and ethnographic study of community health outreach as it is being crucially employed in combating the spread of AIDS among intravenous drug-users and their sexual partners. The site of the study is the Mid-City Consortium to Combat AIDS in San Francisco. Intravenous drug-users comprise the second largest group at risk for AIDS in the U.S. and many outreach projects across the country are being planned for working directly with this group. The S.F. Project appears to be serving as a prototype after which projects in other cities are modeling themselves. The research will focus on two problem areas: (1) how is the S.F. Project designed to train, supervise and sponsor the activities of outreach workers in the community; (2) how do outreach workers contact and cultivate relationships with intravenous drug-users and their sexual partners, and with other community-based groups? Related research questions include, how do outreach workers, and the project as a whole, attempt to evaluate their own effectiveness, what future do outreach workers see in their work as a career, and what """"""""working philosophies"""""""" do outreach workers hold toward the project and their own outreach efforts? Over the course of one year, data will be gathered through participant observation and field-based interviewing. I will observe the process through which outreach workers are recruited and, along with new recruits, I will undergo the project's outreach training program. I will conduct outreach work on a systematic basis with all outreach workers into all of the targeted areas within the city. I will also attend staff conferences concerning outreach efforts and personnel, important meetings with community groups, and directly observe the ways in which the project directors administer, supervise and evaluate the outreach program. Formal, open-ended interviewing will be conducted with all relevant project staff on the dynamics and problems of conducting outreach to combat AIDS within a high risk, highly stigmatized population.
