Community Planning for HIV/AIDS Prevention in Orange County, California: Fid-Bau Portal

Community Planning for HIV/AIDS Prevention in Orange County, California

Takahashi, Lois M. / Smutny, Gayla

HIV/AIDS remains a critical social concern in the United States. Although much progress has been made in terms of medical research, public awareness, and prevention strategies, HIV/AIDS continues to affect more and differing groups of people. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) radically restructured the nature of planning for HIV education and prevention services by requiring a community planning process, to improve the effectiveness of public policy through community participation and locally developed epidemiological data. This paper explores the outcomes and challenges encountered in the community planning process by analyzing the case of Orange County, California. Orange County, widely associated with suburban affluence and high-tech development, is not commonly understood as having societal crises such as HIV/AIDS. However, this municipality has had a growing number of persons living with HIV/AIDS, and has aggressively engaged the community planning process in its efforts to develop more appropriate, more effective HIV education and prevention services. Several facets of the nature of community participation are discussed: the context of institutional structure and practices at the municipal, state, and federal levels; the impacts and challenges encountered through this process; and the effects that community input has had on institutional practices. The paper presents the implications of this analysis for the community participation model's usefulness in planning the delivery of human services.