HIV prevention for & with migrants: Standards, practical examples, basics

HIV prevention for & with migrants: Standards, practical examples, basics

How can quality standards for HIV prevention for & with migrants be developed? Can "standards" be developed at all? This question is essential, because hardly any other area of prevention is as strongly characterized by change, diversity and different prerequisites for prevention work as HIV prevention for & with migrants.

Despite or perhaps precisely because of these major differences, Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe has launched the two-year project "Experience and quality standards in HIV prevention for & with migrants" and developed quality standards that turn diversity into a program and focus on the development of local partnerships and services.

The answer to the two initial questions is therefore: quality standards for HIV prevention for & with migrants can be developed - through participatory quality development. As part of the four workshops (2013-2015), employees of the member organizations in the DAH Association, other local cooperation partners (e.g. prostitution and drug projects, health centers and offices, AWO, Caritas, Robert Koch Institute, Diakonie, Stadtmission) and representatives of migrant communities were supported methodically and professionally in using, reflecting on and expanding their local knowledge. In doing so, they themselves determined what "quality" in HIV prevention means for & with migrants.

Areas of practical prevention work were identified for which the project participants considered standards to be useful, clearly formulated and feasible in terms of structural requirements, process design and results. In a further step, practical examples were collected in order to make visible what is locally specific and special about projects with & for migrants. This step was necessary because not all aspects of working with migrants can be standardized. Text modules on important basics of prevention work for & with migrants were written as an in-depth and well-founded background for the practical work: including the concepts of "diversity" and "structural prevention" and the approach of "participation".

This workbook brings together the jointly developed standards, practical examples and principles of work for and with migrant communities.