Recently funded International Engagement Awards

Dr Mary Chambers
University of Oxford, UK
‘Health in the backyard: engaging Vietnamese farming communities in zoonosis research’
£29 999
This grant will enable the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Viet Nam to carry out a variety of engagement activities around the new Viet Nam Initiative on Zoonotic Diseases, which is funded by a five-year Wellcome Trust Strategic Award. The project will engage with local communities in the early stages of protocol development by exploring perceptions of health risks and needs. This will improve dialogue between stakeholders and scientists and increase the dissemination of research ideas. The project incorporates community forums, including a participatory photography project to facilitate community discussions, work with the local media, and a series of radio sketches to disseminate information about the programme.
E mchambers@oucru.org

Dr Michelle Tameris
Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, South Africa
‘Drama sets the stage for clinical research in adolescents’
£29 985
This project will use drama to improve African adolescents’ insight into tuberculosis (TB) and TB vaccine research. The South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) has developed a comic, ‘Carina’s Choice’, to disseminate information on TB, TB vaccine development, clinical research, and participants’ rights and responsibilities. Adolescents from a local arts school successfully dramatised the story of the comic, forming the basis for expansion of the project. SATVI personnel, together with representatives from the local arts school and the University of Cape Town’s Gordon Institute for the Performing and Creative Arts, will further develop the play’s script and assist the school technically with its production. The play will then be performed at all local high schools, reaching up to 5000 adolescents. Performances will be recorded on video and made available to the Department of Education to support classroom teaching and for use at trial sites by collaborators across Africa.
E michele.tameris@uct.ac.za

Dr Sassy Molyneux
KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Kenya
‘Strengthening community engagement for studies involving most-at-risk populations (MARPs) in Kenya’
£29 056
Important studies at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme for which community engagement is essential but complex are those involving most-at-risk populations (MARPs) for HIV-1, including female sex workers and men who have sex with men. Although MARPs are a priority intervention group for the Ministries of Health, sex work and male-same-sex behaviour is illegal in Kenya. Research and community engagement activities, therefore, can have unintended adverse outcomes for both those the research intends to benefit and the researchers. This project willstrengthen locally appropriate forms of community engagement by documenting, evaluating and amending the current communication structures and activities. As is typical for action research projects, this will be a cyclic process with action and critical reflection taking place in turn.

Dr Astrid J Treffry-Goatley
Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
‘Public engagement with HIV drug adherence through audiovisual media’
£26 630
Africa Centre partners with the South African Department of Health on an HIV Treatment and Care Programme in a rural region of high HIV prevalence in South Africa. In recent public engagement events, it has become clear that the link between patient adherence to antiretroviral drugs and drug resistance is poorly understood at a community level. The Africa Centre will use digital storytelling to create short, first-person video narratives about antiretroviral adherence in this community. These stories will be set against local scientific results from Africa Centre in an entertaining and educational documentary film designed to increase public understanding of adherence and drug resistance and to stimulate dialogue about this area of biomedical research. The stories will be created through a series of workshops with patients and healthcare workers. The film will be used to engage the public at primary healthcare clinics and in a variety of other community settings. Wherever possible, viewings will be followed by interactive sessions to encourage engagement with health research and engender dialogue. The film will also be circulated to Department of Health policy makers and national research and HIV treatment centres, as well as being made available on the internet.
E atreffrygoatley@africacentre.ac.za