Recommended Reading
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The current state of play of research on the social, political and legal dimensions of HIV
Vera Paiva 1 , Laura Ferguson 2 , Peter Aggleton 3 , Purnima Mane4 , Angela Kelly-Hanku 5,6 , Le Minh Giang 7 , Regina M. Barbosa 8 , Carlos F. Caceres 9 , Richard Parker 10
This paper offers a critical overview of social science research presented at the 2014 International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia. In an era of major biomedical advance, the political nature of HIV remains of fundamental importance. No new development can be rolled out successfully without taking into account its social and political context, and consequences. Four main themes ran throughout the conference track on social and political research, law, policy and human rights: first, the importance of work with socially vulnerable groups, now increasingly referred to as "key populations"; second, continued recognition that actions and programs need to be tailored locally and contextually; third, the need for an urgent response to a rapidly growing epidemic of HIV among young people; and fourth, the negative effects of the growing criminalization of minority sexualities and people living with HIV. Lack of stress on human rights and community participation is resulting in poorer policy globally. A new research agenda is needed to respond to these challenges.
Added: Apr 2015 Category: -
Global HIV/AIDS Politics, Policy, and Activism: Persistent Challenges and Emerging Issues
Raymond A. Smith, EditorAn international team of specialists in politics, policy, and activism provide an indispensable guide to the persistent challenges and emerging issues posed by the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, now in its fourth decade.
Added: Dec 2013 Category: -
The Sociology of Social Inclusion
By Dan Allman, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
This article looks at social inclusion from a sociological perspective. It argues that sociology complements biological and other natural order explanations of social stratification. The article interrogates a variety of forms of social integration, including ostracism within 5th century b.c. Greece, 19th-century solidarism, and Goffman’s mid-20th-century work on stigma. It does so to demonstrate how in each of these contexts, social inclusion and exclusion can function as apparati that problematize people on the margins, and by extension, contribute to their governance and control. The article proposes that sociology provides a valuable orientation from which to consider social inclusion because it illuminates how social integration maintains and manages the ways in which people move about and through their socially stratified worlds.
Added: Jan 2013 Category: Research -
UNICEF has released 1000-word expert Commentaries that examine the most compelling issues around the social drivers of HIV: prevention, protection, and gender, expounding why addressing them is now critical to achieving a generation free from HIV and AIDS.
In conjunction with their 25 minute video, The Debate, UNICEF has released 1000-word expert Commentaries that examine the most compelling issues around the social drivers of HIV: prevention, protection, and gender, expounding why addressing them is now critical to achieving a generation free from HIV and AIDS.
HIV/AIDS: Behaviour Change, Social Protection, Inequality and Hope by Tony Barnett, Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science;
Striving for Better Results for Adolescents: Advancing HIV Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support by Craig McClure, Chief, HIV/AIDS Section, Associate Director, Programmes at UNICEF;
The End of AIDS: Biomedical Technologies and Social Determinants - Ever the Twain Shall Meet? by Judith D. Auerbach, Sociologist and Independent Science and Policy Consultant.
A South African Perspective on Gender Inequality, Violence, Sexual Health and HIV by Rachel Jewkes, Director, Gender & Health Unit , South African Medical Research Council
Added: Oct 2012 Category: Social Drivers -
The East African Health Study in Toronto (EAST): Results from a Survey of HIV and Health-Related Behaviour, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Knowledge
Kimberly Gray, Liviana Calzavara, Wangari Tharao, Ashley Johns, Ann Burchell, Robert S. Remis, Ted Myers, Carol Swantee, and Catherine Chalin. 2008. The HIV Social, Behavioural, and Epidemiological Studies Unit, University of Toronto.
Communities from countries where HIV prevalence is high are also disproportionally affected by HIV/AIDS in Canada. In Ontario, trends indicate HIV prevalence among individuals from countries where HIV is endemic increased 72% from 2001 to 2006. Furthermore, a preliminary analysis suggested that cumulatively 22-59% of HIV-positive individuals from these countries had contracted the virus after arriving in Canada. The East African Health Study in Toronto (EAST), a community-academic partnership, was the first large-scale Canadian survey of African communities from countries where HIV is endemic. EAST was conducted in response to the lack of population-based data
necessary to assess HIV-related issues in these communities, and to assist in the development of intervention programs and strategies.Other Publications:
English Factsheet - East African Health Study in Toronto (EAST)
Lessons Learned from East African Health Study in Toronto (EAST)
Added: Dec 2011 Category: Knowledge Translation & Exchange -
Fighting HIV in Australia
John de Wit
University of New South Wales (UNSW). Dec 8, 2011.
As the world commemorates the thirty year fight against HIV this year, UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, has called for a ‘prevention revolution’ to stop new infections. Thirty years on, Australia is still well positioned to take the lead in HIV behavioural prevention, writes NCHSR Director Prof John de Wit in an opinion piece released by UNSW yesterday. It is possible for Australia to become one of the first developed nations where infection rates are going down, but this requires investment in a new generation of behavioural prevention programs, according to Prof de Wit.
Added: Dec 2011 Category: -
Bridging the social and the biomedical: engaging the social and political sciences in HIV research
By Susan C Kippax, Martin Holt and Samuel R Friedman
This supplement to the Journal of the International AIDS Society focuses on the engagement of the social and political sciences within HIV research and, in particular, maintaining a productive relationship between social and biomedical perspectives on HIV. It responds to a number of concerns raised primarily by social scientists, but also recognized as important by biomedical and public health researchers. These concerns include how best to understand the impact of medical technologies (such as HIV treatments, HIV testing, viral load testing, male circumcision, microbicides, and pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis) on sexual cultures, drug practices, relationships and social networks in diȀ erent cultural, economic and political contexts. The supplement is also concerned with how we might examine the relationship between HIV prevention and treatment, understand the social and political mobilization required to tackle HIV, and sustain the range of disciplinary approaches needed to inform and guide responses to the global pandemic. The six articles included in the supplement demonstrate the value of fostering high quality social and political research to inform, guide and challenge our collaborative responses to HIV/AIDS.
Added: Oct 2011 Category: Research -
'Who is Helsinki?' Sex workers advise improving communication for good participatory practice in clinical trials
Melissa Hope Ditmore; Dan Allman
Health Education Research 2011; doi: 10.1093/her/cyq087This study investigated sex workers’ knowledge and beliefs about research ethics and good participatory practices (GPP) and the perspectives of sex workers on research participation.
Added: May 2011 Category: Research
