Woman to Woman: Coming Together for Positive Change—Using Empowerment and Popular Education to Prevent HIV in Women

Abstract

HIV risk is the product of social, cultural, economic, and interpersonal forces that create sex-role definitions and expectations that can lead to gender inequalities in health. Woman to Woman: Coming Together for Positive Change is an HIV/AIDS prevention intervention that takes into account that choices and actions may be constrained by poverty, gender roles, and cultural norms. This project educates and empowers, promotes women's perspectives, reaches women "where they are," and encourages women to speak of their experience. The following study presents the evaluation of the effectiveness of an empowerment based participatory HIV prevention program over a 3-year period, implemented in both rural and urban settings in New Mexico, targeting over 300 women at-risk of HIV/AIDS. In addition, the practicalities of conducting participatory process and outcome evaluation with a small nonprofit with minimal budget will be discussed.