Pasa la Voz (Spread the Word): Using Women's Social Networks for HIV Education and Testing

Pasa la Voz (spread the word) is a methodology used to prevent HIV using respondent-driven sampling to reach hard to access women. An organization in Ciudad Juarez (Programa Companeros) initiated a one-to-one approach to reaching at-risk and hard to reach women in the area using promotoras (outreach workers) from September 2005 to January 2006. The implementation of Pasa la Voz came on its heels and had success in increasing the number of women agreeing to get tested for HIV (11.9% to 49.9%) and decreasing testing time from 22.70 hours to 3.68 hours per test.