Genesis team heads to International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam
31 July 2018
The Health team presented work at the 22nd International AIDS Conference that took place in Amsterdam, Netherlands in July.
Ayesha Ismail, an analyst on the team, was awarded a scholarship to attend the conference and presented a poster on: “What women want: Branding a new HIV-prevention vaginal ring using a user-centric design approach”. Her poster is based on two dapivirine (DPV) vaginal-ring branding studies Genesis conducted for the International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM). Testing the DPV-ring branding showed how understanding consumer preferences for product branding could influence its use.
Genesis also presented two additional posters on our work with the Centre for Communication Impact (CCI) and Soul City Institute for Social Justice.
1. Who understands viral load? Challenges for reaching the third 90 in South Africa. Genesis assessed the levels of HIV-treatment literacy and viral-load knowledge to better understand the gaps in reaching the third 90 in South Africa. We found that viral-load knowledge is low in South Africa. Knowledge varies across socio-economic demographics. Young, HIV-negative men of low socio-economic status are the least likely to know what viral load is. This is important because organisations like CCI can target health communication toward low-knowledge-high-risk groups to achieve the third 90.
2. Condom use at first sex protects young women in South Africa from HIV and teenage pregnancy. We examined the impact of condom use at first sex on HIV status and teenage pregnancy in young women from two provinces in South Africa. We found that young women who used a condom at first sex were two-and-a-half times more likely be HIV negative and were also less likely to have ever been pregnant.
Dr Saul Johnson presented at the Global Prevention Coalition meeting ahead of the start of the International AIDS Conference. This meeting critically assessed progress on setting prevention programme targets and defining programme gaps. These addressed the policy and structural barriers to effective implementation and strengthen accountability among other elements of the HIV Prevention 2020 Roadmap.
The meeting built on the Global Prevention Coalition progress report, recently launched at a special session of the 71st World Health Assembly in May 2018. Johnson also discussed how the UNAIDS Technical Support Mechanism (TSM) can help the coalition achieve its goals.
Consultants who are prevention specialists are encouraged to register their interest by joining the TSM prevention consultant database.