Table 3.

Summary of Emerging Qualitiative Themes with Exemplar Quotes

Theme	Phase 1 and 2 Exemplar Quotes: Acceptability and Feasibility
Acceptability
Perceptions of HIV and HCV testing	Oh, my community, they perceive it as, “I don’t wanna be tested. I don’t want nobody to know I’m getting’ tested.” They feel like people will judge them. I think that the community’s on board and that we as a community, we’re aware of a need for testin’ and screening.
Integration of testing	…it’s very important that you’re trying to really help people understand more about it, and what’s really going on.
Feasibility
Forming a community advisory board	Get a variety of people that can reach out to the community on different levels. It’s kinda like sometimes when adults talk about what we need to do for youth. We all come together with these great minds and we look around the table and there’s no youth at the table.
Encouraging open dialogue	I think it’s very good that we do talk about it. I mean, a lotta people are scared of it. If we can get more information out there I’m sure a lotta people would be much healthier.
Training	… we should get the same trainin’ for the HIV- and the hepatitis C as we did for the breast cancer. When we go out and talk about these issues, HIV and Hepatitis C, we should have a place where we can refer them. We’re gonna need education.
Theme	Phase 3 Exemplar Quotes: Best Practices and Implementation
Recruitment of CHAs
Demographics	We got to train both the husband and the wife. (T)here are a lot of young male adults there who volunteer their time to do coaching … They have an opportunity to reach out to a lot of young male adults who … have no idea where their health stands.
Traits	You have to find somebody that’s trustworthy… Someone who in the community is not afraid to talk about it, to address it, and to walk down that path with him.
Training topics
Disease education	This is some of the things we have to combat, we have to get grounded in medical reality instead of--ignorance
Addressing stigma and bias	I just think we just gotta—instead of learnin’ some stuff, we gotta start unlearnin’ some stuff
Listening and rapport building	They gonna tell you what’s goin’ on, but, now, some of us need training in how to recognize this.
Implementing and sustaining screening efforts
Comprehensive health	… they sit and talk about, “We gonna do a health fair, all we talk about is checkin’ your high blood pressure and checkin’ your glucose. That’s not a health fair. I think a health fair oughta be … covering everything.
Community networking	Things like American Red Cross, fraternities, sororities, AmeriCorps, to actually get people to commit to screening. Blood Service will be a real good one.
Audience appropriate materials	…we know that our target population is African American men, but then you also have to remember your population as far as age groups. Some of these younger people, not necessarily are going to care about hepatitis C. Then you have more mature… men who feel like they’ve lived this life and they haven’t caught anything up till this point so they’re not trying to hear about HIV.
Empower youth	… you were talkin’ about the children, if we empower them, peer pressure, then they can have a positive influence on some of their friends. They listen to peers. More so than they will their parent. If we can empower some of them, then that’s the way of gettin’ some more information out.