The Boston Haitian HIV Prevention Coalition formative evaluation: a participatory approach to community self-assessment.

This article describes the application of participatory evaluation principles and methods to designing and conducting a community survey of the metropolitan Boston Haitian population. The findings of the evaluation baseline community survey of 2,719 Haitians are described, including an overview of the population characteristics and the prevailing HIV prevention knowledge, attitudes, and practices. The participatory evaluation approach was effective in building evaluation capacity, and provided a reliable data source with which to fine-tune the prevention intervention, and increase its efficacy in reducing HIV transmission.