In addition to the many global health courses offered and the global health track which is open to Master of Public Health students, the School of Public Health is home to global health scholars like Stephen McGarvey, a renowned researcher who has spent decades studying food and nutrition in Samoa. Several School of Public Health faculty—including Professors Mark Lurie, Abigail Harrison, Caroline Kuo, and Don Operario—recently travelled to Cape Town, South Africa for a scholarly retreat with University of Cape Town faculty and fellows in the South African Social Science and HIV Programme (SASH).
Established in 2013, SASH is a joint project of the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Brown University funded by the NIH, and it is a model of global health scholarship and collaboration. SASH leverages the
expertise at UCT and Brown to promote integration of the social sciences into teaching, mentoring, and
research around HIV/AIDS at UCT’s School of Public Health and Family Medicine. SASH organizes its academic and research initiatives into three thematic areas: Gender in HIV/AIDS Risk and Response, Antiretroviral Therapy Adherence and Expansion, and HIV Prevention for Women, Youth and Families.
Professor Don Operario led a plenary session on HIV behavioral science theory and methods.Within the gender theme, Abigail Harrison, assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences in the School of Public Health, works on the dynamics of HIV and reproductive health among young women in South Africa. She is currently collaborating with Omar Galarraga, also from the Brown School of Public Health, and Jane Harries, from the University of Cape Town, on a project called Empower-Nudge. This pilot study is evaluating of the use of lottery incentives to increase women’s use of contraception and HIV prevention methods. Projects like this one, while not funded by SASH, share resources with the program and build upon the SASH infrastructure.
Collaborations extend beyond faculty and include current Brown School of Public Health MPH student Marie Sullivan, who conducted a qualitative study on women’s reproductive decision-making in association with SASH in the summer of 2015 with funding from a Nora Kahn Piore Award.
This summer, Ashleigh LoVette, a Brown doctoral student in behavioral and social health sciences, will work in Cape Town with funding from Brown’s Global Health Initiative, to conduct qualitative research on patterns of resilience and coping strategies among adolescents living with HIV/AIDS.
Students from the UCT also benefit. Harrison is also working with Alison Swartz, a South African doctoral student at UCT, who is conducting an in-depth ethnographic study of young people coming of age in Khayelitsha Township, Cape Town. Alison is making a research visit to Brown this Spring.
While the SASH program contributes to the academic capacity at the UCT, it’s also enhancing the research environment for HIV social science at Brown, by fostering a culture of excellence in interdisciplinary research, and by expanding collaborative and innovative research opportunities for faculty and students alike. The faculty involved in this long-standing collaboration hope that as global health continues to grow at Brown, the SASH program and others like it—in China, Mexico, Ghana, and the Philippines—will find the support needed to build upon existing infrastructures and create sustainable programs that will last into the future.