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DB Click: HIV/AIDS November 2012

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November 2012
DB Click: HIV/AIDS
World AIDS Day, December 1 2012, brings together people from around the world to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and demonstrate international solidarity in the face of the pandemic.

1. The Beginning of the End: Tracking Global Commitments on AIDS
	"If the global community is serious about achieving the beginning of the end of AIDS, there must be a renewed effort to examine, improve and scale up the financial, political and programmatic efforts needed to turn vision into action." In this report released for World AIDS Day 2012, the organisation ONE monitors recent progress on improving access to HIV/AIDS treatment and reducing new HIV infections; provides an assessment of the G7 countries’ and the European Commission’s past and current efforts in the fight against HIV/AIDS globally; and sets a baseline for monitoring future progress towards the beginning of the end of AIDS. The report highlights communication aspects of those responses, including advocacy, participation with locally-run programmes, and monitoring and evaluation...

2. The Alliance's Work in Myanmar: Promoting the Health & Rights of People
	The Alliance strategy in Myanmar includes support for local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs) to strengthen the country’s response to HIV. It also works to build the capacity of civil society in preventing HIV and provide treatment, care, and support to people living with HIV...

3.Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA)
	According to this case study from SWAGAA, entrenched gender inequality is a major contributor to Swaziland's HIV prevalence rate, which in turn, hinders poverty reduction and national development activities. Strategies for achieving this vision include advocacy, services, and activities to improve gender-based violence (GBV) policy, prevent violence, and provide care, support, and access to justice to survivors...

4.Tuitange Mothers' Support and Drama Group
This Tanzanian mothers' support group provides its services through home visits and a drama group, Tuitange, which uses role play to encourage voluntary HIV testing and counselling and stresses the importance of exclusive breastfeeding in preventing mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT)...

5.Will There Ever Be an AIDS-Free Generation? - Video
This 25-minute video debate discusses the impact of HIV on adolescents, the urgent need for high-impact services, and the legal, social, and policy issues of providing prevention intervention, including education and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services...

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6.Unlocking the Mysteries of Medical Research: An Exhibition Plan
Exploring research through the eyes of the researcher, medic, patient, and participant to generate debate on the value of medical research to Malawian society, this exhibition seeks to communicate knowledge from Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme research specifically, including research on HIV, as well as foster a more general awareness of medical science, and, ultimately, health-related behaviour change...

7.Art in Global Health
This initiative has set up 6 artist residencies in 6 Wellcome Trust-funded research centres on 3 continents as a way of teasing out some of the personal, philosophical, cultural, and political dimensions of health research and communicating them to the public through exhibitions and the internet. It includes South Africa, where photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa is exploring the part that communities play in contributing to health research at the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies...

8.HIV/AIDS: Behaviour Change, Social Protection, Inequality and Hope
"How far responses to HIV/AIDS should focus on changing individual behaviour or social conditions has always been problematic: the former appears both feasible and often claims to be cost effective whereas the latter seems far more challenging and costly because it requires social protection measures..."

9.Striving for Better Results for Adolescents: Advancing HIV Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support
"Despite impressive overall results in the past decade's response to HIV, especially in terms of dramatically increased treatment coverage for people living with HIV and a 40% reduction in the number of children infected with HIV due to vertical transmission between 2001 and 2011 (UNAIDS, 2012), efforts to prevent HIV sexual transmission and transmission due to sharing of contaminated injecting equipment have achieved more limited success..."

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10.What Shapes Research Impact on Policy? Understanding Research Uptake in Sexual and Reproductive Health Policy Processes in Resource Poor Contexts

Throughout this paper, the term sexual and reproductive health (SRH) encompasses HIV and AIDS, as well as other SRH issues such as sexuality, reproductive services, and sexually transmitted infection (STI) treatment. The authors identify aspects of the policy landscape and drivers of policy change commonly occurring across multiple sectors and studies to create a framework that researchers can use to examine the influences on research uptake in specific settings, in order to guide attempts to ensure uptake of their findings through their policy engagement actions and strategies...

11.The End of AIDS: Biomedical Technologies and Social Determinants - Ever the Twain Shall Meet?

"Throughout the XIX International AIDS Conference (aka 'AIDS 2012'), ...speaker after speaker enthused that we were poised to create an 'AIDS-free generation' and that we were on the verge of 'ending AIDS.'" In this commentary, the author, Judith Auerbach, discusses the reasons for hope, belief, and doubt that the end of HIV/AIDS as an epidemic is in sight...

12.A South African Perspective on Gender Inequality, Violence, Sexual Health and HIV

"[R]esearch with adolescents in South Africa...shows that those who have experienced intimate partner violence or who are in relationships with low equality are at greater risk of incident HIV infections, compared to those who do not." In this commentary, the author, Rachel Jewkes, discusses the critical impact of women's subordination to men and exposure to violence on their risk of HIV...

13.Designing and Implementing a Communications Strategy: Lessons Learnt from HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health Research Programme Consortia

"Health researchers and research organisations need to be able to communicate their research effectively to increase the probability that the findings influence policy and practice, and benefit those in greatest need." This paper reflects on the experience in developing and implementing communications strategies of several Research Programme Consortia (RPC) which include organisations from both developed and developing countries...

14.Challenges in Linking Health Research to Policy: A Commentary on Developing a Multi-Stakeholder Response to Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Ghana

This paper explores the experience of researching orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) to illustrate how the Research and Development Division of the Ghana Health Service has used an intersectoral approach to engagement with HIV policy actors...

15.Strange Bedfellows: Bridging the Worlds of Academia, Public Health and the Sex Industry to Improve Sexual Health Outcomes

The Pleasure Project's research and communications tools provide real-world examples of how safer sex can be (and in many cases, already is) eroticised in practice, and its case studies and other research are used as the basis for participatory exercises at workshops and trainings with sex educators, counsellors, non-governmental organisations, health care providers, and programmers....

16.Creating a Public Space and Dialogue on Sexuality and Rights: A Case Study from Bangladesh

This article presents and examines the experience of linking research on sexuality and rights to active engagement in advocacy with sexual minorities in a challenging context. It describes and analyses a research-based engagement by a university school of public health in Bangladesh aimed at raising public debate on sexuality and rights and making issues such as discrimination more visible to policymakers and other key stakeholders in a challenging context...

17.Regional Network on HIV/AIDS, Livelihoods, and Food Security (RENEWAL)

RENEWAL aims to enhance understanding of the worsening interactions between HIV/AIDS and food and nutrition security and to facilitate a comprehensive response to these interactions in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, and Zambia. The core pillars are locally prioritised action research, capacity strengthening, and policy communications...

18.Playing the Role of a 'Boundary Organisation': Getting Smarter with Networking

This paper discusses the practices of organisations that cross the boundary between research and politics. It uses the experience of a network of organisations in Africa - RENEWAL - to describe the methodology, challenges, and successes of efforts to promote utilisation of research on the interconnections between HIV/AIDS, food security, and nutrition in South Africa...

Virtual Leadership Development Programme (VLDP) for Health Teams Involved with M&E of Family Planning/Reproductive Health Activities in Anglophone Countries

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announces a Virtual Leadership Development Program (VLDP), a 12-week internet-based programme hosted on the VLDP website of the MEASURE Evaluation project’s partner Management Sciences for Health (MSH). The VLDP is created for local health teams involved with monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of family planning and reproductive health activities in Anglophone countries to strengthen individual and team leadership and management practices and to empower those involved in the collection, reporting, analysis, and use of health data, at all levels of an organisation. VLDP will introduce leadership practices and skills (including critical thinking and problem solving) and will then give teams the opportunity to use these skills in addressing specific challenges identified by the teams themselves at the beginning of the programme.

The deadline for applications is November 29 2012. The programme dates are: January 21 2013 - April 12 2013. For more information, contact the VLDP mailbox VLDPMandE12@msh.org or click here.

19.Using Research to Influence Sexual and Reproductive Health Practice and Implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case-Study Analysis
"Research institutions and donor organizations are giving growing attention to how research evidence is communicated to influence policy. In the area of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and HIV there is less weight given to understanding how evidence is successfully translated into practice. Policy issues in SRH can be controversial, influenced by political factors and shaped by context such as religion, ethnicity, gender and sexuality..."

20.Umleavyo
Carried out in the Mwanza Region of Tanzania, this project used participatory radio to disseminate and debate research findings on how parents influence their adolescents' health. It centred around a series of 12 half-hour radio shows focusing on the influence of parent-adolescent interactions on adolescent health and health-related behaviours, including HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk...

21.Evaluating the Impact of Social Media for Social Change
In this presentation delivered at the Wellcome Fourth International Public Engagement Workshop, October 3 2012, Garth Japhet examines Southern African efforts to engage in communication for development and to evaluate those efforts. For example, Soul City, whose ongoing prime-time multimedia vehicles - television, radio, and print - are under one brand in 10 Southern African countries. Communicating in 25 languages, the focus is on HIV/AIDS...

22.Holding a National Health and Mapping Summit to Build Partnerships for Improving Health Outcomes: Lessons Learned from the Nigeria Health and Mapping Summit of 2011
"The net short-term result of a health and mapping summit will be momentum. This momentum should not be squandered, but should be sustained by following through on action items and by producing tangible results." This collaboration provides an example of how to bridge the divide between the health and mapping sectors in any country as a means to improve national health outcomes, especially with respect to HIV/AIDS...

23.The Essential Package (EP): Holistically Addressing the Needs of Young Vulnerable Children and Their Caregivers Affected by HIV and AIDS
Developed by the HIV/AIDS Working Group/The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the Essential Package is a group of developed and validated tools and frameworks that can be used as a guide for programme managers, service providers, policy makers, and parents to meet the needs of young children, particularly those affected or infected by HIV/AIDS, to reach their optimal development from birth to age eight...

24.The Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania: Mainstreaming HIV Programming into Natural Resource Management and Economic Growth Activities
This case study, which forms part of the AIDSTAR-One Case Study Series, shares the experience of the Jane Goodall Institute to mainstream HIV prevention, care, and support into natural resource management. According to the case study, HIV has had a significant effect on conservation in sub-Saharan Africa...

25.HIV in the Land of Baseball and Bachata: Dominican NGOs Provide Comprehensive Services to Those Most at Risk
"Today, Rosa gives a talk about HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) to the women at El Mamey, demonstrating the correct use of condoms and reminding the women to come for their monthly medical checkups at the Clínica de Familia La Romana (La Romana Family Clinic). At the end of her talk she answers questions, addresses common misunderstandings about HIV, and hands out educational materials and condoms..."

26.Getting Research into Policy - Herpes Simplex Virus Type-2 (HSV-2) Treatment and HIV Infection: International Guidelines Formulation and the Case of Ghana
"Policy networks may serve as the primary driving force of change in both international context and in the case of Ghana. Communication among researchers and policy-makers is critical for uptake of evidence and opportunities may exist to formalize policy networks and engage donors in a productive and ethical way." This paper examines the process through which the evidence related to HIV-HSV-2 interactions (whereby herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) enhances the potential for HIV acquisition or transmission) influences policy at the international level and then the mechanism of international to national policy transfer, with Ghana as a case study...

27.National Policy Development for Cotrimoxazole Prophylaxis in Malawi, Uganda and Zambia: The Relationship between Context, Evidence and Links
This paper explores national policymaking around cotrimoxazole (trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole) preventive therapy (CPT) in developing countries as a case study for the application of a policy analysis lens to issues in health policy development on the national level. The links between different research and policy actors were of critical importance, with overlaps between researcher and policymaker networks crucial to facilitate knowledge transfer...

28.Addressing Sexual Violence and HIV in Department of Correctional Services: A Guide for Working with Members of the Department of Correctional Services
This guide was produced to build the capacity of Department of Correctional Services members to address inmate vulnerabilities to HIV and sexual abuse in South Africa's prisons. It is designed to foster positive action and change and empower participants to become change agents in their own lives and in the correctional centres in which they work...

DB CLICK: HIV/AIDS updates you on recent HIV/AIDS initiatives recently placed on The Communication Initiative website, including a specific focus on HIV/AIDS and development as well as a specific focus on HIV/AIDS, young people, and research.

DB CLICK: HIV/AIDS complements The Drum Beat through a specific focus on role of communication in the eradication of HIV/AIDS.

Take a look at the HIV/AIDS Theme Site for more on HIV/AIDS and communication for development, as well as HIV/AIDS, Young People, Research Theme Site for sharing research on young people and HIV/AIDS.

Send us information about your HIV/AIDS case studies, reports, evaluations, thinking, and resources. Send to AIDS@comminit.com

If you have colleagues who might wish to receive The Drum Beat and DB Click: HIV/AIDS, please ask them to email AIDS@comminit.com with the word "Subscribe" in the subject line. Thank you.

from The Communication Initiative...where communication and media are central to social and economic development...

Partners: ANDI, BBC Media Action, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Breakthrough, Calandria, DFID, FAO, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), Inter-American Development Bank, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs, MISA, Oxfam Novib, PAHO, The Panos Institute, Puntos de Encuentro, The Rockefeller Foundation, SAfAIDS, Sesame Workshop, Soul City, STEPS International, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNICEF, USAID, The Wellcome Trust, World Health Organization (WHO), W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

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DB Click: HIV/AIDS November 2012

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