Background--the origins of the care system assessment demonstration project.

The Care System Assessment Demonstration Project was designed to assist community planning bodies in determining barriers to care for people living with HIV (PLWH) in selected underserved minority populations and generating recommendations for care system enhancement that would lower those barriers. This paper describes the selection of three sites to participate in the project and sketches the two primary tools used in implementing the project: Rapid Assessment, Response and Evaluation (RARE) techniques initially developed to assess community HIV prevention needs, and a system assessment model created to help communities conduct systematic evaluations of their HIV care systems. The paper also provides an overview of the remaining chapters of the supplement, detailing how the project was implemented at the national level and the three participating sites and evaluating both the project's process and its local impact.