Despite progress, the South continues to have highest rates of HIV in the United States, with Black, Latine, LGBTQ+ people disproportionately impacted. Systemic social and structural barriers consistently drive these disparities. In response to these persistent disparities, the Southern HIV Impact Fund (SHIF) provides tailored technical assistance, one-year grants, and leadership development to HIV-focused organizations and coalitions, social justice organizations, and coalitions working on intersectional issues. These efforts support unfettered access to HIV prevention and care; better resource advocacy and movement-building efforts; and increase diverse leadership reflective of the regional epidemic.

This session will share retrospective results from SHIF’s 8 Year history, as well as SHIF’s community engagement strategies, developed to intentionally address the common mismatch between public health programs and community needs that often hamper impact. This session will both describe SHIF’s robust community engagement strategies, as well as recommendations to adapt such strategies for similar programming.

The adoption of such strategies allowed SHIF to engage community in the design, implementation, and evaluation of programming, as well as continually adapt to address community needs and emergent threats. Further, such engagement allowed us to maximize limited resources, directing focus and financial support in the areas of greatest need and to areas for greatest opportunity for innovation. Further, leveraging feedback allowed SHIF to reduce administrative burden, better enabling grantees to focus their time and energy on HIV prevention, care, advocacy, and movement building work that will improve outcomes for people living with and affected by HIV for years to come.