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Community Responses to HIV/AIDS
Principal Investigator: Dr Catherine Campbell, HIVAN Fellow, Reader in Social Psychology at the London School of Economics.
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In the light of the dearth of formal medical resources and capacity in the face of the magnitude of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, grassroots lay people are playing an increasingly central role in the management of HIV/AIDS in KwaZulu-Natal. It will also be their task to reconstruct shattered communities once the epidemic has run its course.
Within such a context, community strengthening approaches have a vital role to play alongside biomedical and behavioural responses to the epidemic.
Against this background, the proposed research aims to analyse grassroots community responses to the challenges of HIV prevention and AIDS care, and the forms of grassroots local knowledge and skills that have evolved in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
This will be done through focusing on the responses of (i) traditional healers, (ii) young people and (iii) NGOs dealing with orphans and home-based care. This analysis will be conducted in the interests of providing both ?’guidelines for best practice?’ and theoretical frameworks to inform policies and interventions which seek to strengthen local community responses to HIV/AIDS.
Between 1994 and 2001 the Proposed Principal Investigator was involved in the implementation and process evaluation of a large community-led HIV-prevention programme in Carletonville, near Johannesburg.
The project was based on textbook state-of-the-art ideals of local community participation and local stakeholder management. However, as the life of this theoretically and politically well-informed project unfolded, it became clear that while the ideals of community mobilisation and grassroots participation make good theoretical, intuitive and political sense, much remains to be learned about the complexities of implementing these ideals in real world contexts.
The "paradigm drift" towards community-based HIV-prevention programmes, and community-led strategies for the care of PLWAs and AIDS orphans, has highlighted the importance of addressing the following questions:
* What constitutes a ?’health-enabling community context?’ (a context which enables and supports health-enhancing sexual behaviour, as well as the tolerant care and support of PLWAs and AIDS orphans?) and
* How best to promote the development of such contexts in local communities where HIV/AIDS flourishes.
The proposed project will address these questions through studies of three forms of grassroots participation:
* grassroots participation in HIV-prevention(focusing both on youth and traditional healers);
* grassroots participation in AIDS-care (focusing on traditional healers and NGOs); and
* local community mobilisation as a general community strengthening strategy (traditional healers, youth and NGOs) with particular reference to strengthening communities to provide care and support to orphans and home-based care for PLWAs (NGOs).
Role of researcher/ senior researcher
The successful candidate would work closely with Dr Campbell in conducting the research outlined above. It is anticipated that Dr Campbell (who is based at the London School of Economics) would be in almost daily email or telephone contact with the researcher, as well as visiting Durban regularly for periods of joint work.
Where funding was available, and if they wished to do so, the successful candidate might also visit the L.S.E. for short periods of joint work. Dr Campbell would take intellectual leadership of the project, as well as leadership of the research design and analysis, and the researcher would take leadership in setting up and managing the collection and analysis of research findings.
It is anticipated that the researcher/senior researcher?’s post would include the following tasks:
* conducting literature reviews as necessary
* liaising with appropriate community organisations and individuals
* employing and supervising research assistants
* supervising MA students who will assist with data collection
* managing the translation and transcription of interview findings
* collecting documentary data as necessary
* analysing research findings in collaboration with Dr Campbell
* co-authoring papers in collaboration with Dr Campbell and other appropriate authors preparing a manual for use by community organisations
* supervising the construction of a web-site presenting invited talks and conference papers, as well as presenting regular seminars or ?‘updates of findings?’ in the project?’s guest academic department(s) as necessary. |
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