Harnessing “Scale-Up and Spread” to Support Community Uptake of the HoMBReS por un Cambio Intervention for Spanish-Speaking Men: Implementation Science Lessons Learned by a CBPR Partnership

Abstract

Latinx men in the southern United States are affected disproportionately by HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). However, few evidence-based prevention interventions exist to promote health equity within this population. Developed by a well-established community-based participatory research partnership, the HoMBReS por un Cambio intervention decreases sexual risk among Spanish-speaking, predominately heterosexual Latinx men who are members of recreational soccer teams in the United States. Scale-up and spread, an implementation science framework, was used to study the implementation of this evidence-based community-level intervention within three community organizations that represent typical community-based providers of HIV and STI prevention interventions (i.e., an AIDS service organization, a Latinx-serving organization, and a county public health department). Archival and interview data were analyzed, and 24 themes emerged that mapped onto the 12 scale-up and spread constructs. Themes included the importance of strong and attentive leadership, problem-solving challenges early, an established relationship between innovation developers and implementers, organizational capacity able to effectively work with men, trust building, timelines and incremental deadlines, clear and simple guidance regarding all aspects of implementation, appreciating the context (e.g., immigration-related rhetoric, policies, and actions), recognizing men’s competing priorities, and delineated supervision responsibilities. Scale-up and spread was a useful framework to understand multisite implementation of a sexual risk reduction intervention for Spanish-speaking, predominately heterosexual Latinx men. Further research is needed to identify how constructs, like those within scale-up and spread, affect the process across the implementation continuum, given that the uptake and implementation of an innovation is a process, not an event.