TAKIN' IT TO THE STREETS

Abstract

An ethnographic analysis is offered which examines four methodological problem areas that community health outreach workers manage in attempting to stop the spread of AIDS. Outreach workers' client populations include drug injectors and their sexual partners, prostitutes, and homeless/runaway youths. The analysis notes that outreach workers confront several problems of work that are strikingly similar to some of the central methodological problems of conducting ethnography. These are (a) establishing a very unusual but credible identity in communities whose members harbor substantial distrust; (b) discovering a community from members' points of view; (c) forming relationships, but controlling one's level of involvement and impact; and (d) cultivating viable roles in the field.