Participate

Active Projects:

  • SOMOS Alianza:
    • The purpose of SOMOS Alianza is to serve as a strategic alliance of scientists, implementers, and community partners with the goal of identifying new strategies to deliver prevention and treatment to Latino gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) in Miami, San Juan, and Orlando. SOMOS members participate in in-person and virtual meetings to set goals, identify assets and strengths in each jurisdiction that could be translated to other jurisdictions, and speed networking/matchmaking to promote connections, scaling out innovations, and developing new implementation research and practice projects. SOMOS Alianza recently was awarded an R01 grant to study and scale up the strategies our member organizations are using to improve the reach of PrEP and mental health treatments to Latino MSM.
  • JUNTOS
    • The JUNTOS Referral Network is an implementation strategy to help local HIV providers make better referrals when working with Latino men who have sex with men (MSM) clients. In this study, we are enrolling South Florida based HIV test counselors to help us evaluate the JUNTOS tool. Counselors who enroll will then invite their Latino MSM HIV testing clients to participate as well. HIV test counselors who are fully eligible complete online surveys and receive access to tools to help them with referrals; those who participate in all components of the study can earn up to $150, $200 if they complete exit interview.
  • CHARM Equitable Implementation Science Core
    • The Center for HIV and Research in Mental Health (CHARM) is a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funded AIDS Research Center intended to provide research infrastructure to University of Miami researchers. CHARM includes an Equitable Implementation Science (EIS) Core, of which Dr. Harkness is the director. The EIS Core aims to support research on equitably implementing and disseminating evidence-based interventions to reach communities who could most benefit.
    • The EIS Core oversees the CHARM Implementer Survey. The goal of this survey is to collect information from implementers who are involved in the delivery of HIV, mental health, substance use, and other types of services for the South Florida area. This survey is a way to help us identify local implementers who may wish to participate in research and to learn more about local implementers’ needs and priorities.
    • If you are someone who implements or provides HIV or mental health/substance use services in South Florida, please consider completing the CHARM Implementer Survey: https://redcap.miami.edu/surveys/?s=YLY98LWAAX

  • Community Advisory Board (CAB)
    • The REACH CAB (Community Advisory Board) is dedicated to incorporating community feedback to the various steps in the research process, and ensure the work REACH produces (e.g., survey language, publications, presentations, etc.) is informed by the experiences of local Latino men who have sex with men in Miami. If you are interested in potentially serving on the REACH CAB, please feel free to reach out to our team expressing your interest. To learn more about the
      CAB contact us at reach@miami.edu.

 

Completed Projects:

  • Dime Más
    • The purpose of the Dime Más study was to evaluate different strategies for connecting Latino gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) with PrEP, HIV, and mental health services. This pilot study compared several different strategies, including standard community outreach, Dime Más (delivered by our partners at Care Resource), and Oye Miami (an online resource tailored for Latino MSM) to see which strategies were most helpful for getting Latino MSM connected to services.
      • Key publications from this study: Aim 1 focus group findings

 

  • Oye Miami (Peer Ambassador Study):
    • The Peer ambassador study looks at the impact of being a PrEP and Behavioral Health Peer Ambassador on PrEP and behavioral health treatment persistence among Latino MSM. This is done through the contribution of stories by Latino MSM about PrEP and behavioral health treatment experiences and persistence. The Oye Miami website contains all peer stories and is meant to provide community and support for LMSM in Miami through a visual outlet.

 

  • Hombre a Hombre:
    • Hombre a Hombre is an intervention that our team, in partnership with our CAB, adapted from an existing evidence based intervention, Within My Reach (WMR), to promote healthy relationship skills. For this project, which is based directly on the needs and priorities of the REACH CAB, we culturally adapted the intervention for Latino sexual minority men (SMM) using the ADAPT-ITT adaptation framework. We then conducted a small pilot test to evaluate how Latino SMM experienced the Hombre a Hombre intervention.

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  • Within My Reach
    • Within My Reach (WMR) is an evidence-based relationship education program designed for delivery to individuals. For this project, REACH Equity is culturally adapting this existing program for use with Latino sexual minority men (LSMM) using the ADAPT-ITT adaptation framework and
      stakeholder input to then pilot test WMR for LSMM. Acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility of the adapted WMR program using validated measures will be evaluated after each session and the end of the program.

 

 

 

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