The RARE Model of Rapid HIV Risk Assessment

The impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on minority communities called for interventions to stem the increase in new HIV infections and identify HIV-positive individuals for referral to care and treatment services. The Rapid Assessment, Response and Evaluation (RARE) project was designed to provide highly affected communities with a tool that would quickly identify conditions that fuel new infections and serve as barriers to HIV-positive individuals getting HIV testing, care, and treatment. RARE brought indigenous community health outreach workers and key community-level stakeholders together to advocate for the transfer of findings into programmatic and policy responses in places where high risk behaviors were practiced. This article describes RARE's qualitative methods that captured the voice of those most affected by the HIV/AIDS threat and identified critical insights and dynamics about factors that lead to HIV infections and those that can move positive individuals into care and treatment.