The investigators propose the development and implementation of a southern Texas/Hispanic Outreach Program for AIDS prevention (STOP-AIDS). It will be a community-based multiproject center with local, regional, and some international activities. The San Antonio and south Texas region, an area about the size of Connecticut with a population of 2.5 million, adjoins the Mexican border, where there are four large border cities that have a combined population of about 1.2 million. The region has relatively few cases of AIDS, with most concentrated in San Antonio (93) and Corpus Christi (19). An exact count is not available because of migration and reporting problems. Seroprevalence is likewise still low, about 25-30% in gay men and 2% in IV drug users. Some early outreach/education efforts are underway, however, these are insufficient. No specific programs are yet targeted at the large Hispanic population. For these reasons, the investigators feel that prevention efforts are particularly important in the region and propose several specific projects: (1) Outreach/Education, which directs information and incentives for voluntary testing to high-risk groups: IV drug users, homosexual and bisexual men and their partners, prostitutes, and women in danger of bearing children with HIV: (2) Professional Development of Health Providers, a region-wide health professional training program in AIDS epidemiology, treatment, diagnosis, and preventing; (3) Community Group Outreach, which includes in-service programs for educators, community centers, and day-care facilities and for leaders in community groups and business, to promote their informed involvement in the making of public policy, (4) Mass Media AIDS education/prevention project, with special emphasis on developing innovation, effective, yet sensitive material for the Hispanic community, (5) Research/Evaluation projects that will conduct selective surveys to guide the above education efforts, and which will coordinate epidemiologic and serologic surveys for HIV prevelence in collaboration with health officials in south Texas and northern Mexico.
