Centers

Partnership for HIV/AIDS Research in KwaZulu Natal

Principal Investigator: Eleanor Preston-Whyte
Columbia University Principal Investigator: Richard Parker
Grant supported by NICHD

The goals of the proposed project were to facilitate and foster social science research and training in the field of HIV/AIDS, and to promote the development of sustained and mutually informative multidisciplinary interaction between the social and bio-medical scientists in seeking solutions to the epidemic in African populations. The setting of the proposed program was the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, although the research results had resonance for other African situations where HIV constitutes a major threat to life and well being. These objectives were achieved by a combined, iterative and mutually reinforcing training and research program in the specific field of ethnographic research methods tailored to the needs of local HIV/AIDS researchers, activists and policy makers.

An interdisciplinary team of social, behavioral and bio-medical researchers from the Center for HIV Networking (HIVAN) at the University of Natal in South Africa and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City, were involved in both components of the project, providing social science training annually to between 16-24 students, and conducting foundational studies in one urban and one rural location in Kwa-Zulu-Natal.

With classroom-based instruction in social sciences theory and methods followed by mentored experiential training in the field, trainees were able to contribute bio-social perspectives on HIV/AIDS either as researchers, professionals and/or community workers. The experiential training occurred in the context of multi-year extended case studies of the HIV-related challenges face by women and children in three domains of their lives: clinic settings, where women and children received medical care; families and households, where the epidemic was faced on a day-to-day bases as they faced the reactions of family members to their HIV status, and, in the wider community, which had provided critical support, such as care for women when ailing, and for orphaned children.

The studies were prompted by the milestone event of the introduction of antiretroviral therapy to prevent both mother-to-child transmission of HIV and to sustain the health of poor women. When implemented, the ethnographic research and the training program made up a seamless whole, with the ethnographic project acting as a teaching reference point and learning site for the training program, and the training program providing capacity for the ethnographic project and its future extension.

As part of the larger first training in ethnographic research design in the Partnership for HIV/AIDS Research in KwaZulu Natal, members of this project helped to develop a 2-week training course in ethnographic observation and interviewing in the facilities of Center for HIV Networking (HIVAN) at the University of Natal in June 2003. The first cohort of trainees conducted fieldwork in their respective areas of research (examples). In July, 2004, they presented their research during poster sessions at the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand.

In August 2004, the second, expanded 3-week intensive training course on ethnographic observation and interviewing for the second cohort of trainees in this project (after analysis of the first workshop, we concluded that two weeks was insufficient, and because of this we chose to expand the time period for the subsequent training workshops) was held. The second cohort of trainees included junior researchers and graduate students from South Africa, Nigeria and Uganda. A third 3-week training course was planned for August 2005.